There was something odd, he thought, about the Middlemeads transaction. He had never heard Robert mention the mortgagee's being Mrs. Frere: but he would say nothing about it; it might agitate him. So he dismissed the matter from his mind, and went cheerfully back to Robert, whom he found pale and depressed, and willing to talk only of the one engrossing topic--_when_ an answer must surely come from Miss Burton. "What a fine fellow he is!" Robert thought sadly, in Yeldham's absence, as he reviewed Frere's conduct in their interview. "How nobly generous and forgiving! What a contrast to me! And yet he cannot have loved her as I love her, or no generosity could avail to make him pardon the man who robbed him of her. Ah, no; who could ever love her as it is my torment, my punishment, and yet my life, my pride to love her?" A few hours more, and suspense, so far as the clue with which Mrs. Stanbourne had furnished Robert was concerned, was ended. The following morning brought a letter to Mr. Yeldham from Miss Burton, written, not from Paris, but from an obscure village in the Pyrenees, where a religious house of the order to which she belonged had lately been established. Its contents were conclusive. She had never heard from or of Katharine from the time she had received the intimation of her marriage; she had it not in her power to afford the slightest information or assistance, beyond writing to the superior of her former convent in Paris, and entreating her, should Mrs. Streightley make inquiry there for her, to detain her if possible, but in any case to communicate with her friends. She expressed the liveliest concern and inquietude concerning Katharine, and the deepest regret for her own inability to help in this sore strait. Profound discouragement fell upon the friends when they had read this letter; nevertheless Robert bore the disappointment better than Yeldham expected. He had a settled sense of the sin he had committed upon him, and a resigned conviction that the punishment was not to be escaped or lessened. The uttermost farthing was to be the sum of the payment to be exacted from him; he did not rebel against the conviction he suffered. "I will never give up seeking her, though I don't believe I shall ever see her face again," he would say to Yeldham, when his friend strove to encourage him, to exhort him to a hope he himself was far from feeling. Yeldham answered Miss Burton's letter, thanking her warmly for her good wishes, and the precaution she had taken in their behalf; and then he had nothing more to do--the weary waiting had to be resumed.