From the moment, now over a week ago, that he had been allowed to sit up in bed, and more or less distinct thought had come back to him, he had been a prey to hideous anxiety and grief. Halcyone was gone from him--had been snatched away by Fate, who, with relentless vindictiveness, had filled his cup. For the first letters that he opened, marked from his lawyers so urgently that they had been given to him before the bandages were off his head, contained the gravest news of his financial position. The chief mortgagee intended to foreclose in the course of the next three months, unless an arrangement could be come to at once, which appeared impossible. He was actually at bay. Thus, although in his first moments of consciousness, he had intended to go directly he was well and demand his love openly and chance the rest, this news made that course now quite out of the question. He could not condemn her to wretched poverty and tie a millstone round both their necks. The doctors had absolutely forbidden him to read or even know of any more letters--the official ones the secretary could deal with--but he became so restless with anxiety that Arabella Clinker was persuaded to bring them up and at least let him glance at the addresses. There was one from Cheiron, which he insisted upon opening--a brief dry line of commiseration for his accident, with no mention of Halcyone in it. The complete ignoring of his letter to announce their marriage cut him deeply. He realized Mr. Carlyon guessed that the accident had happened before that event could take place, and his silence about it showed what he thought. John Derringham quivered with discomfort, he hated to feel the whip of his old master's contempt. And he could not explain matters or justify himself--there was nothing to be said. The Professor, of course, knew of Halcyone's whereabouts--but, after his broad hint of his want of sympathy about their relations, John Derringham felt he could not open the subject with him again. This channel for the assuagement of his anxieties was closed. The immense pile of the rest of his correspondence was at last sorted. He knew most of the writings, and the few he was doubtful about he opened--but none were from his love. So he gave them all back to Arabella, and turned his face from the light physically exhausted and with a storm of pain in his heart. Mrs. Cricklander had carefully gone through each post as it came, and longed to destroy one or two suspicious-looking communications she saw in the same female handwriting--from his old friend Lady Durend, if she had known!--but she dared not, and indeed was not really much disturbed. She had laid her own plans with too great a nicety and felt perfectly sure of the ultimate result of their action. Arabella was each day sent up with the subtlest messages to the poor invalid, which her honor made her unwillingly repeat truthfully.