He was more anxious than ever for a few words alone with Chris, but he was unable to obtain them. When his employer’s son appeared at the office, which was not till late in the day, he carefully avoided the opportunity Bram sought. After shaking hands with him with a dash and an effusion which made it impossible for the other to draw back, even if he had been so inclined, Chris, with a promise of “seeing him presently,” went straight into his father’s private office, and did not reappear in the clerks’ office at all. In spite of the boisterous warmth of his greeting, Bram had noticed in Christian two things. The first was a certain underlying coldness and reserve, which put off, under an assumption of affectionate familiarity, the confidences which had been the rule between them. The other was the fact that Christian looked thin and worried. Bram lingered about the office till long after his usual hour of leaving in the hope of catching Christian. And it was at last only by chance that he learnt that Chris had gone some two hours before, and, further, that he was to start for London that very evening. Now, this discovery worried Bram, and set him thinking. The intercourse between him and Christian had been of so familiar a kind that this abrupt departure, without any sort of leave-taking, could only be the result of some great change in Christian’s feeling towards himself. So strong, although vague, were his fears that Bram when he left the office went straight to the new house in a pretty suburb some distance out of Sheffield, where Christian had settled with his bride. Here, however, he was met with the information that Mr. Christian had already started on his journey, and that he had gone, not from his own, but from his father’s house. As Bram left the house he saw the face of young Mrs. Christian Cornthwaite at one of the windows. She looked pale, drawn, unhappy, and seemed altogether to have lost the smug look of self-satisfaction which he had disliked in her face on his first meeting with her. Much disturbed, Bram went away, and returned to his lodging, passing by the farm, where there was no sign of life to induce him to pause. It was nine o’clock, and as there was no light in any of the windows, he concluded that Mr. Biron had gone to bed, tired out with his day’s hunting, and that Claire had followed his example. He felt so restless, so uneasy, however, that instead of passing on he lingered about, walking up and down, watching the blank, dark windows, almost praying for a flicker of light in any one of them for a sign of the life inside. After an hour of this unprofitable occupation, he took himself to task for his folly, and went home to bed. On the following morning, before he was up, there was a loud knocking at the outer door of the cottage where he lived. Bram, with a sense of something wrong, something which concerned himself, ran down himself to open it.