less of a library, nothing at all of the domestic place, dear to man and woman alike, which it had been when Edgar never was so happy as with his sister beside him. How strange it was to be there--how dismal to be there on such an errand. In this room Clare had given him the papers which were his ruin; here she had entreated him to destroy them; here he had made the discovery public; and now to think the day should have come when he was here as a stranger, caring nothing for Arden, thinking only how to remove her of whom he seemed to have become the sole brother and protector, from the house she had been born in! He walked about and about the rooms, till the freshness of these associations was over, and he began to grow impatient of the stillness and suspense. He had told Clare that he would wait, and that she should find him there when he was wanted. He had begged her to do nothing that night--to wait and consider what was best; but he did not even know whether she was able to understand him, or if he spoke to deaf ears. Everything had happened so quickly that a sense of confusion was in Edgar’s mind, confusion of the moral as well as the mental functions; for he was not at all sure whether the link of sympathetic horror and wonder between Arden and himself, as to what Clare would do, did not approach him closer, rather than separate him further from this man, who hated him, to begin with, and who was yet not his sister’s husband. Somehow these two, who, since they first met, had been at opposite poles from each other, seemed to be drawn together by one common misfortune, rather than placed in a doubly hostile position, as became the injurer and the defender of the injured. When Arden came in some time after, this feeling obliterated on both sides the enmity which, under any other circumstances, must have blazed forth. Edgar, as he looked at the dull misery in Arthur’s face, felt a strange pity for him soften his heart. This man, who had done so well for himself, who had got Arden, who had married Clare, who had received all the gifts that heaven could give, what a miserable failure he was after all, cast down from all that made his eminence tenable or good to hold. He was the cause of the most terrible misfortune to Clare and her children, and yet Edgar felt no impulse to take him by the throat, but was sorry for him in his downfall and misery. As for Arthur Arden, his old dislike seemed exorcised by the same spirit. In any other circumstances he would have resented Edgar’s interference deeply--but now a gloomy indifference to everything that could happen, except one thing, had got possession of him. “What does she mean to do?” he said, throwing himself into a chair. All power of self-assertion had failed in him. It seemed even right and natural to him that Edgar should know this better than he himself did, and give him information what her decision was.