“I don’t know that I should mind much,” said honest Harry; “there are such heaps of them, for one thing; and children ain’t much in my way. There’s two little things, I believe--little girls, which riles Arden. Helena’s got a baby, by the way--did you know?--the rummiest little customer, bald, like its father. Nell was as mad as could be when I said so. By Jove! what fun it was! with a sort of spectacled look about the eyes. If that child don’t take to lecturing as soon as it can speak, I’ll never trust my judgment again.” Edgar did not feel in a humour to make any response to young Thornleigh’s laughter. He felt himself like an instrument which was being played upon, struck by one rude touch after another, able to do nothing but give out sounds of pain or excitement. He could do nothing to help Clare, nothing to liberate Gussy; and yet Providence had thrust him into the midst of them without any doing of his, and surrounded him once more with at least the reflection of their lives. He let Harry laugh and stop laughing without taking any notice. He began to be impatient of his own position, and to feel a longing to plunge again into the unknown, it did not matter where, and get rid of those dear visions. Excitement brought its natural reaction in a sudden fit of despondency. If he could do nothing--and it was evident he could do nothing--would it not be better to save himself the needless pain, the mingled humiliation and anguish of helplessness? So long as he was here, he could not but ask, he could not but know. Though the ink was scarcely dry upon the letters he had been writing, the cry for aid to establish himself somehow, in an independent position which he had sent forth to all who could help--a sudden revulsion of feeling struck him, brought out by his despair and sense of impotence. Far better to go away to Australia, to New Zealand, to the end of the world, and at least escape hearing of the troubles he could do nothing to relieve, than to stay here and know all, and be able to do nothing. An instrument upon which now one strain of emotion, now another, was beaten out--that was the true image. Lady Mary had played upon him the other day, eliciting all sorts of confused sounds, wound up by a sudden strain of rapture; and now Harry struck the passive cords, and brought forth vaguer murmurs of fury, groans of impotence, and pain. It would not do. He was not a reed to be thus piped upon, but a man suffering, crying out in his pain, and he must make an end of it. Thus he thought, musing moodily, while Harry laughed over his sister’s bald baby. Harry himself was a dumb Memnon, whom no one had ever woke into sound, and he did not understand anything about his companion’s state of mind. “Have you come to an end of your questions?” he said. “You ain’t so curious as I expected. Now here goes on my side? First and foremost, in the name of all that’s wonderful, how did you come here?”