This inquiry filled his mind with animation during all the long, familiar journey towards Arden, which he had feared would be full of painful recollections. He was almost ashamed of himself, when he stopped at the next station before Arden, to find that not a single recollection had visited him. Hope and imagination had carried the day over everything else, and the problematical Consul behind his green _persiane_ had routed even Clare. The letter, however, which had brought him here had been of a sufficiently disagreeable kind to make more impression upon him. Arthur Arden had never pretended to any loftiness of feeling, or even civility towards his predecessor, and Edgar’s note had called forth the following response:-- “SIR,--I don’t know by what claim you, an entire stranger to my family, take it upon you to thrust yourself into my affairs. I have had occasion to resent this interference before, and I am certainly still less inclined to support it now. I know nothing of any person named Lockwood, who can be of the slightest importance to me. Nevertheless, as you have taken the liberty to mix yourself up with some renewed annoyance, I request you will meet me on Friday, at the ‘Arden Arms,’ at Whitmarsh, where I have some business--to let me know at once what your principal means--I might easily add to answer to me what you have to do with it, or with me, or my concerns. “A. ARDEN. “P.S.--If you do not appear, I will take it as a sign that you have thought better of it, and that the person you choose to represent has come to her senses.” Edgar had been able to forget this letter, and the interview to which it conducted him, thinking of his imaginary Consul! I think the reader will agree with me that his mind must have been in a very peculiar condition. He kept his great-coat buttoned closely up, and his hat down over his eyes, as he got out at the little station. He was not known at Whitmarsh, as he had been known at Arden, but still there was a chance that some one might recognize him. The agreeable thoughts connected with the Consul, fortunately, had left him perfectly cool, and when he got out in Clare’s county, on her very land, the feeling of the past began to regain dominion over him. If he should meet Clare, what would she say to him? Would she know him? would she recognize him as her brother, or hold him at arm’s length as a stranger? And what would she think, he wondered, with the strangest, giddy whirling round of brain and mind, if she knew that the dream of three years ago was, after all, to come true; that, though Arden was not his, Gussy was his; and that, though she no longer acknowledged him as her brother, Gussy had chosen him for her husband. It was the only question there was any doubt about at one time. Now it was the only thing that was true.