Here the conversation came to a sudden pause; for the two who were outside were seen to turn in the direction of Dr Mitford’s study, and to enter the house, which made the crisis come nearer, as it were. Neither of the two ladies could have told how the afternoon passed. Every sound that went through the house seemed to them significant. Sometimes a door would open or shut, and paralyse them for the moment. Sometimes a sound as of a single step would be heard in one of the passages, and then Mrs Mitford and Kate would rise up and flush crimson, and listen as if they had not been listening all the time. “Now they are coming!” one or the other would say, with a gasp, for the waiting affected their very breathing. Except on these occasions, they scarcely exchanged two words in half an hour. From time to time Kate looked at her watch, and made a remark under her breath about the hour. “It is too late for the four o’clock train,” she said; and then it was too late for the mail at half-past five; and all this time not a word came out of the stillness to relieve their anxiety. The bees buzzed about the garden, and the sun shone and shone as if he never could weary of shining, and blazed across the monotonous lawn and vacant paths, which no step or shadow disturbed. Oh the burden of the silence that lay upon that whole smiling world outside, where not even a leaf would move, so eager was nature to have the first word of the secret! When Mrs Mitford’s needles clicked in her tremulousness, Kate glanced up with eyes of feverish reproach; and when Kate’s scissors fell, the room echoed with the sound, and Mrs Mitford felt it an injury. Thus the long, weary, languid afternoon passed on. When Jervis began to stir with his preparations for dinner, and to move about his pantry, with clink and clang of glass and silver, laying the table, the sounds were to them like the return of a jury into their box to the anxious wretches waiting for their verdict. Dinner was coming, that augustest of modern ceremonies, and the ladies felt instinctively that things must now come to a decision. And accordingly, it was just after Jervis had carried his echoing tray out of the pantry to the sideboard when the door of the study at last opened, and steps were heard coming along the passage--Dr Mitford’s steps, creaking as they came, and another footstep, which Kate knew to be her father’s. Not John! The ladies sat bolt upright, and grew red and grew pale, and felt the blood tingle to their finger-points. And then they looked at each other, and asked, silently, “Where has he gone?” This time it was no longer the jurymen. It was the judge himself, coming solemn with his verdict. The gentlemen came into the room one behind the other, Mr Crediton looking worn and tired, and even Dr Mitford’s white tie grown limp with suspense and emotion. But it was he who was the first to speak.