There was nothing unusual in the tone of Yeldham's note--nothing to excite Robert's hopes or fears. He had had several such notes from the writer; and yet he was agitated while he read it, and nervous when he laid it down. He was always nervous now, he said to himself, as he rebuked his own tremors. How unmanly, how weak, how foolish he was becoming--less and less like a man whom she ever could love, he would think, with a degree of despondency which might have proved to him, had he considered his own case in a philosophical light, how much hope had really lurked at the bottom of his abnegation. This nervousness increased as the hour drew near for his interview with Yeldham; and at six o'clock, when the streets were bright with gaslight, and the crisp cold of a clear wintry night had set in, Robert Streightley's hand trembled as he knocked at the outer door of his friend's chambers, and his face was pale. Yeldham observed him closely, and decided on deferring his purposed communication until a later hour. Accordingly he easily gave a plausible turn to his summons of Streightley; the two dined together; and Roberts spirits rose, as they invariably did, under the influence of his old friend's genial temperament. Yeldham knew that Robert would not deliberately break through the established rule of silence on the subject of Katharine, but that he might be easily led into doing so; and he accordingly gave the conversation a turn which brought it to bear upon the past, and then seized the opportunity. Robert took the communication which his friend made to him with more calmness than Yeldham had anticipated, but he was not in the least sanguine. "The question now is, Robert, whether you or I shall go to find her and bring her back," said Yeldham in the most cheerful tone he could command. Robert kept silence. "I expected you to have been quite elated," said his friend in almost a tone of reproach. "You take it very quietly. At all events you must be thankful to know that we shall find out where she is, and all about her circumstances." "I am thankful, God knows," said Robert, "as well as He, and He only, knows what I have suffered, in my ignorance, in the innumerable fears that have beset me, and," he said with a heavy sigh, "that may all be realised yet. I am thankful; but this intelligence, and my gratitude for it, do not bring me nearer to _her_. No, no, Charley, I shall never see her face again--never see her face again!" he repeated drearily; and leaning his elbows on the table, he laid his face on the open palms of his hands. Yeldham looked uneasily at him. He knew that he was quoting Katharine's own words.