A few minutes after he walked into his wife’s sitting-room, the letter open in his hand. Lady Markham was seated close to the great window against the dying light, with a candle flaring melancholy on a table beside her, reading her letter. Alice, behind her, read it too, over her mother’s shoulder: surprise and trouble were on their faces. Alice had begun to cry. Lady Markham in her wonder and distress, was repeating a few words here and there aloud. “I can no longer hope for anything in this country of prejudice.” “Going away to a new world.” They were both so absorbed that they did not hear Sir William’s entrance till he suddenly appeared, holding out his letter. “What is the meaning,” he asked, “of this, Isabel? What is the meaning of it?” The indignation of the head of the house, which seemed to be directed against themselves, brought the two ladies with a sudden shock out of their own private dismay, and gave them a new part to play. Their hearts still quivering with the sudden blow which Paul’s disclosure had given them, they still turned in a moment into apologists and defenders of Paul. “What is it?--from Paul, William? he has written to you _too_,” said Lady Markham, with trembling lips. “What does it mean?” cried Sir William. “He is going off, he says--away--to Australia or New Zealand, or somewhere. What does it mean? No doubt he takes you into his confidence. If you have known of this intention long you ought to have let me know.” “I am as much overwhelmed as you can be, William. I have just got a letter.” Lady Markham stopped, her lips trembling. “Oh, Paul, my boy! He cannot mean it,” she said. “It must be some fancy of the moment. At his age everything is exaggerated. William, William, something must be done. We must go to him and save him.” “Save him! from what are we to save him?” Sir William began to pace up and down with impatience and perplexity. He was not so angry (they thought) as they had feared. He was anxious, unhappy, as they were, though querulous too. “What is the meaning of it? Follies like this do not spring up all at once. You must have seen it coming on. You must know what it means. What has he been writing to you about lately? Is there--any woman----?” “William!” cried his wife. “Well!--Alice, run away; we can discuss this better without you.--Well! it need not be anything criminal or vicious, though of course that is what at once you imagine it to be. Has he spoken of any one? Has he ever---- No, he would not do that. He is a fool,” cried the anxious father; “he is capable of any nonsense. But it need not necessarily be anything that is vicious--from your point of view.”