Edgar went home in the evening, feeling a degree of agitation which he had scarcely given himself credit for being capable of. He had been on so low a level of feeling all these years, that he believed himself to have grown duller and less capable of emotion, though he could not explain to himself how it should be so. But now the stormwinds had begun to blow, and the tide to rise. The mere sight of Lady Augusta was enough to have brought back a crowd of sensations and recollections, and there had lately been so many other touches upon the past to heighten the effect of this broad gleam of light. Even the curious recognition of him, and the apparently foolish enmity against the Ardens, which the young lady at Tottenham’s had shown, had something to do with the ferment of contending feelings in which he found himself. Hate them! no, why should he hate them? But to be thus called back to the recollection of them, and of all that he had been, had a strangely disturbing influence upon his mind. In his aimless wanderings alone over Europe, and in his sudden plunge into a family life quite new to him in Scotland, he had believed himself utterly set free from all the traditions and associations of the former existence, which was indeed more like a chapter out of a romance than a real episode in life. Taking it at the most, it was nothing but an episode. After years of neglected youth, a brief breathless moment of power, independence, and a kind of greatness, and then a sharp disruption from them all, and plunge into obscurity again. Why should that short interval affect him more than all the long tracts of less highly coloured life, from which it stood out like a bit of brilliant embroidery on a sombre web? Edgar could not tell; he felt that it did so, but he could not answer to himself why. Mr. Tottenham talked all the way back about one thing and another, about Miss Lockwood, and the scandal which had suddenly shocked the establishment, about little Mary Thornleigh and her brilliant marriage, about the evening entertainment to be given in the shop, which was quite as important to him. Fortunately for Edgar, his companion was capable of monologue, and went on quite pleasantly during their drive without need of anything more than a judicious question or monosyllable of assent.