The presence of Mr. Stainforth and his daughter added another embarrassment to the sudden arrival of Paul. His mother did not know what to say to him, how to restrain her questions,--how to talk of his health and his occupations, if the journey had been pleasant, how he had come from the station, and all the other trivialities which are said to a visitor suddenly arriving. She had to treat Paul like a visitor while the others were there. Paul for his part answered these matter-of-course questions very briefly. He had an air of suffering both mentally and bodily, and he was very pale. He looked at Dolly Stainforth, and said nothing, sitting in the shade as far from the great window as possible. And the Rector would not go away. He sat and put innumerable questions to the new-comer. What he was going to do? What he thought of this thing and the other? Of course he was going back to Oxford to take his degree? that was the one thing that was indispensable. Paul gave the shortest possible answers to every question, and they were not of a satisfactory description. His mother, anxiously watching and fretting beyond measure to be thus kept in suspense about his purposes, could get no information from what he said to Mr. Stainforth, nor did the earnest gaze she had fixed upon him bring her any more enlightenment. Alice had gone out beyond the shade of the curtains to speak to Fairfax, and the embarrassment of the four thus left together was extreme. Dolly had not spoken a word since Paul entered. She had given him her hand, no more, when he came in, but she did not speak to him or even raise her head, except to listen with something of the same breathless anxiety as was apparent in Lady Markham’s face, while the old Rector went on with his questions and advices. The two women trembled in concert with a mutual sense of intolerable suspense, scarcely able to bear it. Dolly knew, however, that she would have to bear it, that she had nothing to do with the matter, that the only service she could do them was to relieve the mother and son of her presence and that of her father, who, however, after she had at length got him to his feet, still stood for ten minutes at least holding Paul’s hand and impressing a great many platitudes upon his attention--with “Depend upon it, my dear boy,” and “You may take my word for it.” Paul had no mind to depend upon anything he said or to take his word for it in any way. He stood saying “Yes” and “No,” or replying only with a nod of his head to his mentor. But Mr. Stainforth was not at all aware that he had stayed a second too long. He blamed Dolly for the haste with which she had hurried him away. “But I am glad I had the opportunity of seeing Paul,” the old man said complacently, as his daughter drove him down the avenue. “You must have seen how pleased he was to talk his circumstances over with such an old friend as myself. Poor fellow, that is just what he must most want now. The ladies are