“What would happen?” said Edgar, as the other paused. He was half amused and half alarmed by the turn that things were taking, and did not know what strange use he might be put to next. “Ah, I don’t know what might not happen,” said Mr. Tottenham, yielding for a moment to the influence of Edgar’s distressed but humorous countenance. “However, don’t be frightened. You shall not be forced to do anything. I don’t approve of over-persuasion. But supposing that you should be interested, as I expect, a great deal more than you think--” This he said in a deprecatory, propitiatory way, looking up suddenly from the letter he was writing. Edgar stood in front of the fire, contemplating both parties, and he was half touched as well as more than half amused by this look. He did not even know what it was he was called upon to interest himself in; but the eagerness of his companions, about their several plans, went to his heart. “You may be sure, if there is anything I can do--” he said, impulsively. “You should not allow Mr. Earnshaw to commit himself till he has seen what it is,” said Lady Mary, from the opposite table; and then she, too, turned half round, pen in hand, and fixed an earnest gaze upon him. “I may write to my people and tell them the German class will be resumed next week?” she said, with much the same entreating look as her husband had put on. It was all Edgar could do to preserve his gravity, and not reply with indecorous gaiety, like that which had provoked her before; for Lady Mary, on this point at least, was less tolerant and more easily affronted than her husband. “If you think I can be of any use,” he said, trying to look as serious as possible; and thus, before he knew, the double bargain was made. It would be impossible to describe in words the whimsical unreality of the situation in which Edgar thus found himself when he got into Mr. Tottenham’s phaeton to be driven back to town, in order to be made acquainted with the other “Tottenham’s.” Only a few days had passed since the wintry evening when he arrived a stranger at the hospitable but unknown house. He was a stranger still according to all rules, but yet his life had suddenly become entangled with the lives which a week ago he had never heard of. He was no visitor, but a member of the family, with distinct duties in it; involved even in its eccentricities, its peculiarities, its quaint benevolences. Edgar felt his head swim as they drove from the door which he had entered for the first time so very short a while ago. Was he in a dream? or had he gone astray out of the ordinary workday world into some modern version of the Arabian Nights?