Edgar made his appearance next day, looking so worn and fatigued that Lady Augusta had not the heart to warn him, as she had intended to do, that for the present she could not receive his visits--and that Gussy had not the heart to be cross. He told them he had been to Arden on business concerning Clare, and that Arthur Arden had come to town with him, and that peace and a certain friendship reigned, at least for the moment, between them. He did not confide even to Gussy what the cause of this singular amity was; but after he had been a little while in her company, his forehead began to smoothe, his smile to come back, the colour to appear once more in his face. He took her aside to the window, where the girls had been arranging fresh Spring flowers in a _jardinière_. He drew her arm into his, bending over the hyacinths and cyclamens. Now, for the first time, he could ask the question which had been thrust out of his mind by all that had happened within the last few days. A soft air of Spring, of happiness, of all the sweetness of life, which had been so long plucked from him, seemed to blow in Edgar’s face from the flowers. “How should we like a Consulship?” he said, bending down to whisper in her ear. “A what?” cried Gussy, astonished. She thought for the moment that he was speaking of some new flower. Then Edgar took Lord Newmarch’s letter from his pocket, and held out the postscript to her, holding her arm fast in his, and his head close to hers. “How should you like a Consulship?” he said. Then the light and the life in his face communicated itself to her. “A Consulship! Oh! Edgar, what does it mean?” “To me it means you,” he said--“it means life; it means poverty too, perhaps, and humility, which are not what I would choose for my Gussy; but to me it means life, independence, happiness. Gussy, what am I to say?” “Say!” she cried--“yes, of course--yes. What else? Italy, perhaps, and freedom--freedom once in our lives--and our own way; but, ah! what is the use of speaking of it?” said Gussy, dropping away from his arm, and stamping her foot on the ground, and falling into sudden tears, “when we are always to be prevented by other people’s folly, always stopped by something we have nothing to do with? Ask mamma, Edgar, what has happened since you went away.” Then Lady Augusta drew near, having been a wondering and somewhat anxious spectator all the time of this whispered conversation, and told him with tears of her interview with Harry.