‘What is the matter with Anne?’ Willie Ashley asked, wondering, when they came away. ‘It can’t be because she has lost her money. She has no more spirit left in her. She has not a laugh left in her. What is the cause of it all?’ But the Curate made no answer. He set his teeth, and he said not a word. There was very little to be got out of him all that day. He went gloomily about with his brother, turning Willie’s holiday into a somewhat poor sort of merry-making. And when they went to dinner with the Mountfords at night, Charley’s usual taciturnity was so much aggravated that he scarcely could be said to talk at all. But the dinner was gay enough. Rose, it seemed to young Ashley, who had his private reasons for being critical, ‘kept it up’ with Douglas in a way which was not at all pleasant. They had been together all the afternoon, and had all sorts of little recollections in common. Anne was much less subdued than in the morning, and talked like her old self, yet with a difference. It was when the party broke up, however, that Willie Ashley felt himself most ill-used. He was left entirely out in the cold by his brother, who said to him briefly, ‘I am going home with Douglas,’ and threw him on his own devices. If it had not been that some faint guess crossed the younger brother’s mind as to Charley’s meaning, he would have felt himself very badly used. The Curate put his arm within his friend’s. It was somewhat against the grain, for he did not feel so amicable as he looked. ‘I am coming back with you,’ he said. ‘We have not had a talk for so long. I want to know what you’ve been after all this long while.’ ‘Very glad of a talk,’ said Douglas, but neither was he quite as much gratified as he professed to be; ‘but as for coming back with me, I don’t know where that is to be, for I am going to the club.’ ‘I’ll walk with you there,’ said Charley. However, after this announcement Cosmo changed his mind: he saw that there was gravity in the Curate’s intentions, and turned his steps towards his rooms. He had not been expected there, and the lamp was not lighted, nor anything ready for him; and there was a little stumbling in the dark and ringing of bells before they got settled comfortably to their _tête-à-tête_. Charley seated himself in a chair by the table while this was going on, and when lights came he was discovered there as in a scene in a theatre, heavy and dark in his black clothes, and the pale desperation with which he was addressing himself to his task. ‘Douglas,’ he said, ‘for a long time I have wanted to speak to you----’ ‘Speak away,’ said the other; ‘but have a pipe to assist your utterance, Charley. You never could talk without your pipe.’