To-morrow! It seemed to both mother and sister as if a thousand calamities, too terrible to think of, might be happening, might have happened, before to-morrow; and on the other hand, how, they asked each other with a pitiful interchange of looks, were they themselves to live through the night? No feeling of this description moved Sir William. He was very much disturbed and annoyed, but certainly it would do no good to any one were he to render himself unfit for action by foolish anxiety. Nor did he feel any of that vague horror of apprehension which filled their minds. He was a great deal more angry and much less alarmed about his son’s well-being. On the other hand, he was less sanguine; for he did not hope that Paul would listen to reason, as they hoped that by their entreaties, by their tears, by the sight of the misery his resolution would bring them, Paul might relent and give way. After a while Sir William returned to his library and to his blue-books, and the official letter which he had only half-read, which he had suffered himself to be so much influenced by parental feeling as to leave in the middle; and though he paused now and then to frown and sigh, and give a thought aside to the troubles of paternity, yet he went on with his work, and gave all the attention that was necessary to the public business, until his usual hour for going to bed. Lady Markham and Alice spent their evening in a very different way; they read their letter over twenty times at least; they found new meanings in every sentence of it. Hidden things seemed to be brought out, emotions, penitences, relentings, by every new perusal. Sometimes these discoveries plunged them into deeper trouble--sometimes raised them to sudden hope. How little Paul was conscious of the subtle shades of meaning they attributed to him! They were like commentators in all ages; they found a thousand ideas he had never dreamed of lurking in every line of their author; and with all these different readings in their heads spent a sleepless night. CHAPTER X. Paul Markham was not in his rooms. The porter at the college gate looked curiously upon the party of people who asked after him. It was not the time of year when college authorities interfere with undergraduates; neither was a virtuous young man “staying up to read” likely to call forth their censures. The porter could not give them any information as to where to find Paul; the party (he thought) looked anxious, just as he had seen people look whose son had got into trouble: the father with wrinkles in his forehead, but an air of business and anxious determination to look as if there was nothing particular in it--nothing but an ordinary visit; the mother with a redness about her eyes, but a smile, very courteous, even conciliatory, to the porter himself, and so sorry to give him trouble; and an eager young sister clinging to the mother, looking anxiously about, staring at every figure she saw approaching.