Mr. Tottenham made a pause. Did he mean anything by that pause? Poor Edgar, who felt himself to be a sport to all the wild imaginations that can torture a man, sat silent, and felt the blood boiling in his veins and his heart leaping in his throat. It was as well that his companion stopped talking, for he could not have heard any voice but that of his own nerves and pulses all throbbing and thrilling. Heaven and earth! might it be possible that this should come about, while he, a man, able and willing to work, to slave, to turn head and hands to any occupation on the earth, should be hanging on helpless, unable to interfere? And yet he had but this moment told Gussy’s mother that she need not fear him! A strong impulse came upon him to spring down from the waggon and walk back to town and tell Lady Augusta to fear everything, that he would never rest nor let her rest till he won her daughter back to a more smiling life. Alas, of all follies what could be so foolish? he, the tutor, the dependent, without power to help either himself or her. The waggon rushed along the dark country road, making a little circle of light round its lamps, while the sound of the horses’ feet, and the roll of the wheels, enveloped them in a circle of sound, separating, as it were, this moving speck of light and motion from all the inanimate world. It would have been as easy to change that dark indifferent sphere suddenly into the wide and soft sympathy of a summer evening, as for Edgar, at this period of his life, to have attempted from this hopeless abstraction, in which he was carried along by others, to have interfered with another existence and turned its course aside. Not now--if ever, not yet--and, ah, when, if ever? It was a long time before he was able to speak at all, and his companion, who thus wittingly or unwittingly, threw such firebrands of thought into his disturbed mind was silent too, either respectful of Edgar’s feelings, or totally unconscious of them, he could not tell which. “May I ask,” he inquired, after a long pause, clearing his throat, which was parched and dry, “what was meant by ‘Helena’s sad business?’ What has become of that Miss Thornleigh?” “What has become of her is, that she’s married,” said Mr. Tottenham. “A very natural thing, though Helena, I believe, was a little ashamed of herself for giving into it. She married a man who has nothing but his brains to recommend him--no family to speak of, and no money, which, between ourselves, is a good deal worse. He is a professor, and a critic, and that sort of thing--too clever for me, but he suits her better than anyone I know. Helena is a totally different sort of person, sure to have her own way, whatever she takes into her head. Now Gussy, on the contrary----” “Mr. Tottenham,” said Edgar, hoarsely, “for God’s sake, don’t say any more.”