so sore with the present that she could not console herself with the future. How could it be that Job was comforted with other sons and daughters, instead of those he had lost? How many a poor creature has wondered over this! Can one make up for another? Lady Markham sat all alone, half suffocated with unshed tears. Paul was going away, and she had not the courage to go to Alice, to question her, to hear that in heart she also had gone away. Thus she sat disconsolate in the drawing-room, while Gus took possession of the library. The poor little gentleman was still sadder than Lady Markham; not so unhappy, but sadder, not knowing what to do with himself. The long evening alone appalled him. He took a book, but he was not very fond of reading. The children had gone to bed. He went to the window once, and, looking out, saw a red spark, moving about among the trees, of Paul’s cigar. Probably, if he joined him, it would only be to feel more the enormity of his own existence. Gus went back to his chair, and drawing himself close to the fire (which Mr. Brown had caused to be lighted, reflecting that Sir Augustus was a foreigner, and might feel chilly), fell asleep there, and so spent a forlorn evening all by himself. Was this what he had come to England for, to struggle for his rights, and make everybody unhappy? It was not a very lofty end after all. And next day there was so much to be settled. Paul was astir early, excited and restless, he could not tell why. It seemed to him that one way or other his fate was to be settled that day. If Janet Spears clung to him, if she insisted on keeping her hold upon him, what was he to do? He went down very early to the village, wandering about all the places he had known. He had never been very genial in his manners with the poor people, but yet he had been known to them all his life, and received salutations on all sides. Some of them still called him Sir Paul. They knew he was not his father’s successor--that there was another and altogether new name in the Markham family--but the good rustics, many of them, could not make out how, once having been Sir Paul to their certain consciousness, he could ever cease to bear that title. The name brought back to the young man’s mind the flash of finer feeling, the subdued and sorrowful elation with which he had walked about these quiet roads on the morning of his father’s funeral. He had meant to lead a noble life among these ancestral woods. All that his father was and more, he had intended to be. He had meant to show his gratitude for having escaped from the snare of those follies of his youth which had nearly cast him away, by tolerance and help to those who were like himself. In politics, in the management of the people immediately within his influence, he had meant to give the world assurance of a man. But now that was all over. In his place was poor little Gus: and he himself had neither influence nor power.