He looked well, a little grave perhaps, a little worn; no doubt he was working hard. He did not stare about as did others, nor cast a single glance at the radiant figure in the benchers’ seats. At times he seemed preoccupied and buried in thought, but he gave his undivided attention to the sermon, to which he listened with folded arms and a critical air, as if he were weighing every word of it in his mind, and as though it were a summing up of evidence being laid before a jury of which he was a member. There was no abstracted air about him, his mind was on the alert, he had cast the past or future aside, and was absorbed in the present. The sermon concluded, crowds flocked through the ancient doorway, and scattered outside. Lady Rachel still lingered, and looked about eagerly, ere taking her departure westward, and then she exclaimed, in a disgusted voice-- “I wanted to have asked Mr. Wynne to lunch, if I had seen him to speak to,” shaking out her parasol and opening it with a jerk of annoyance. “But there he goes, marched off by that girl in the green and blue frock--the very sight of it turns me cold! And do you see the old papa rushing after them, and accosting him with rapture? The way in which girls throw themselves at men’s heads nowadays, is abominable. However, it’s a mistake for these bold creatures to imagine that men will marry them. They either take a wife from the stage or music-hall, or some quiet little country mouse. As for Mr. Wynne, he is a widower, and I believe his wife was a perfect _horror_--so he will not be caught again! Ah, here’s a hansom! Now, my dear girl, get in, get in. These dry sermons make me frightfully thirsty. I am dying for my lunch.” CHAPTER XXXV. INFORMATION THANKFULLY RECEIVED. The house in Belgrave Square remained closed for many months, whilst its master roamed from one fashionable continental resort to another, in search of what he called health--but which was merely another name for variety and amusement. Madeline was at first averse to this protracted absence; but she had excellent news of little Harry. Laurence was still in what she called “the sulks;” and every day weakened her hold more and more on her former ties, and bound her to her present condition. In the early twenties a girl is very adaptable, and it had come to this, that at times Miss West forgot that she had ever had other than this sunny butterfly existence; and, if her conscience occasionally made a claim on behalf of her child, she promptly told herself that he was well cared for, and that Lady Frederick Talboys sent all her children out to nurse until they were three years of age, and Harry was barely two. As for Laurence, he would come to his senses in time; and the idea of telling her father of her marriage she now put away in the lumber-room of her brain, and rarely looked at.