Was it possible that it was only yesterday he had come to know them? He hurried out with his message, quite agitated by the sight of this family trouble. It was no affair of his, and he had no mother as Lady Markham suggested, to make him understand; but his heart seemed to be suddenly filled up like an empty vessel with these new people’s affairs. He tried to laugh at himself, but stopped in the midst of the effort, growing portentously grave. Why should he laugh? If Sir William was ill, and Paul on the point of abandoning his natural position and his native country on a wildgoose chase, with which in all probability he would soon be utterly disgusted, circumstances were very grave for the Markham family. Perhaps Fairfax felt it all the more strongly that he in his own person had no family to abandon. He felt the want so much that he wondered all the more at one who, with all these pleasant things belonging to him, should be willing to throw up everything, and go off into the wilds with Spears--with Spears! he repeated to himself with indignant, yet half-amused surprise. He did not know anything about Janet, for the very good reason that till this morning there had been nothing to know. Fairfax walked very rapidly to Paul’s college, but did not find him. As he however came slowly back again across the deserted quadrangle, he met young Markham coming gloomily along, his head down, and his countenance obscured. There was a sort of dull decision in Paul’s aspect, as if all his affairs had been settled at a stroke, as if the hopes and uncertainties of ordinary life were over for him. He who held his head so high, whose step was so light and elastic with all the rapidity of a visionary, came along now crushing the grass with a heavy foot, all the lightness and youthfulness gone out of him. Fairfax looked at him with an impulse of wonder. This favourite of fortune, so much beloved, important to so many, with the world at his feet, what could have put so much perverseness into his mind that he, of all men in the world, should be discontented with his lot! How wonderful it was! Paul did not want to be accosted, to be disturbed in his gloomy thoughts by any frivolous interruption. He was about to pass with a sullen nod when Fairfax stopped him against his will. “Markham, I am sent to tell you that your father is ill.” Paul stopped, and regarded him with sudden anger. “What the devil,” he said, with altogether uncalled-for indignation, “have you to do with my affairs?”