“Mr. Rivers seems to be staying a long time in Clifton,” Mrs. Lennox said one evening, disturbing Rosalind out of these dreams. Roland was in the room, though she could scarcely see him, and Rosalind had been guilty of what she herself felt to be the audacity of thinking of her unknown lover in the very presence of this visible and real one. She had been sitting very quiet, drawing back out of the light, while a gentle hum of talk went on on the other side of the fire. The windows, with the twilight stars looking in, and the bare boughs of the trees waving across, formed the background, and Mrs. Lennox, relieved against one of those windows, was the centre of the warm but uncertainly lighted room. Hamerton sat behind, responding vaguely, and intent upon the shadowed corner in which Rosalind was. “How can he be spared, I wonder, out of his newspaper work!” said the placid voice. “I have always heard it was a dreadful drudgery, and that you had to be up all night, and never got any rest.” “He is not one of the principal ones, perhaps,” Roland replied. “Oh, he must be a principal! John would not have brought a man here who is nothing particular to begin with, if he had not been a sort of a personage in his way.” “Well, then, perhaps he is too much of a principal,” said Hamerton; “perhaps it is only the secondary people that are always on duty; and this, you know, is what they call the silly time of the year.” “I never knew much about newspaper people,” said Aunt Sophy, in her comfortable voice, something like a cat purring by the warm glow of the fire. “We did not think much of them in my time. Indeed, there are a great many people who are quite important in society nowadays that were never thought of in my time. I never knew how important a newspaper editor was till I read that novel of Mr. Trollope’s--do you remember which one it is, Rosalind?--where there is Tom something or other who is the editor of the _Jupiter_. That was said to mean the _Times_. But if Mr. Rivers is so important as that, how does he manage to stay so long at Clifton, where I am sure there is nothing going on?” “Sometimes,” said Hamerton, after a pause, “there are things going on which are more important than a man’s business, though perhaps they don’t show.” There was something in the tone with which he said this which called Rosalind out of her dreams. She had heard them talking before, but not with any interest; now she was roused, though she could scarcely tell why.