The whole scene, though simple, is suggestive of loss and loneliness. Sartoris, leaving the table with some haste, goes to the window to hide his emotion. Dorian follows him. Whereupon Horace, rising too, crosses to where Clarissa sits, and, bending over her, says something in a low tone. The moments fly. A clock upon the mantel-piece chimes half-past four. Some bird, in the exuberance of its mad joy, scurries wildly past the windows. Sartoris, with a sigh, turns from the light, and, seeing Miss Peyton and Horace still deep in conversation, frowns slightly. "Horace, will you tell Durkin I want to see him at once, in the library," he says, very quietly, yet with some latent irritability. "In one moment," replies Horace, unmoved, going back to the low-toned dialogue he has been carrying on with Clarissa. "I am afraid I must lay myself open to the charge of rudeness," says Sartoris, still very quietly, but with a peculiar smile. "But it is important, and I must see Durkin at once. My dear Horace, oblige me in this matter." "Shall I not see Clarissa to her carriage first?" says Horace, raising his dark eyes for one moment to his uncle's face. "Dorian will see to that," says the old man, slowly, but so decisively that Horace, bidding the girl a silent but warm farewell, with a bad grace departs. "How late it grows," says Miss Peyton, glancing at the clock; and, drawing from a side-pocket her own watch, she examines it attentively, as though to assure herself the huge timepiece on the mantel-shelf has not told a deliberate lie. "I must go home! Papa will wonder where I have been all this long time. Good-by, Mr. Branscombe" (she is still, naturally, forgetful of the new title). "I hope," very sweetly, "you will come to see us as soon as ever you can." "Thank you, yes, I shall come very soon," says Sartoris; and then she bids him good-by, and Dorian follows her from the room into the great dark hall outside. "How changed he is!" she says, turning suddenly to him, and indicating, by a little backward motion of her head towards the room she had just left, the person of whom she speaks. "How altered!--Arthur, I mean. Not now, not by this grief; it isn't that: his manner, to me especially, has been altogether different for a fortnight past. Ever since that last picnic at Anadale--you remember it--he has not been quite the same to me." "Let me see; that, I think, was the evening you and Horace drove home alone together, with that rather uncertain brown mare, was it not?" says Dorian, with no apparent meaning in his tone. "My dear child, I dare say you are mistaken about Arthur. Your imagination is leading you astray." "No, it is not. I am the least imaginative person alive," says Miss Peyton, with an emphatic shake of her pretty head. "I can't bear that sort of people myself; they are always seeing something that isn't there, and are generally very tiresome all around. I'm rather vexed about Arthur, do you know?"