These were the thoughts in his mind as he sat alone and pondered, arranging his ideas. He had known what it was to be much troubled by public business in his day, but he had experienced little trouble with his own. All was orderly and well regulated in his private affairs: no skeletons in the cupboards, nothing anywhere that could not meet the eye of day. This was the very sting of the present occurrence to him. A secret! That _he_ should be convicted of a hidden chapter of early indiscretion, of having taken a foolish step which might have coloured all his life! Though it was no wrong to her, his wife could scarcely fail to think it a wrong, and he could not but suffer in the estimation of everybody who heard of it. Already, was he not humiliated in his own eyes? But for this pause which enabled him to rearrange his thoughts, to settle his plan of operations, he felt that he must have been overwhelmed altogether. At last, with a sigh, he got up and prepared himself to issue forth out of his sanctuary, and meet the dangers that threatened him; he to be threatened with dangers of such a sort!--It was intolerable--yet it had to be borne. He went out to meet the party which he could hear coming up the avenue. Brown looked at him with suspicious eyes as he came into the hall. Could Brown know anything? did everybody know? Even Lady Markham, he thought, looked at him strangely, almost with alarm. But it is unnecessary to say that this was all in Sir William’s imagination. No one had as yet associated any idea of mystery with him. His wife only thought he was weary with the work of the session, and looking pale. She was standing talking to Colonel Lenny, waiting till Alice should draw up at the door. Sir William, with a faint gleam of returning pleasure, stood on the top of the steps and waited too; but then he was confronted by the vision of the pink bonnet by his daughter’s side. A pink bonnet! who had been talking of a pink bonnet? He came down slowly, half afraid of this and everything else that was new. “In good time, Markham,” said Colonel Lenny, waving his hand; “here is another old friend come to see you. She is changed more than you are. From a girl, and a pretty one, she has grown an old woman, and that’s not a thing to be permitted; but an old friend, my dear fellow, and more than an old friend. Can’t you see it’s Katey? Katey, my wife?” “Katey!” Even Sir William’s steady nerves gave way a little. His eyes seemed to give a startled leap of alarm in their sockets. For a moment the impulse in his mind was to turn and fly. Lenny was bad, but his wife was a hundred times worse; and she looked at him, leaning out of the pony carriage and holding out her hands as if she meant to kiss him; but that was more than flesh and blood could bear. “Katey!” he said; “I cannot believe my eyes. Is it Katey Gaveston after all these years? I know I’ve grown an old man, and everything has changed, but----”