The half bargain was concluded, and Sidney went on his way rejoicing. There was rejoicing in the hearts of all in that house for a while. Mrs. Wesden cried over her girl as though she was going away to-morrow, but talked as if it were a settled engagement, and was glad that Sidney Hinchford was to be her son-in-law some day. Mr. Hinchford and Mr. Wesden smoked their pipes together that evening, and talked about it in short disjointed sentences, amidst which Mr. Hinchford learned that Mr. Wesden would retire from business before the year's probation had expired, leaving Mattie, possibly, in charge. Mattie and Ann Packet in the lower regions dwelt upon the same subject, free debatable ground, which no one cared to hem round by restrictions. Late in the evening, Mattie stole up to Harriet's bed-room, and knocked softly at the panels of the door. "May I come in?" she asked. "To be sure, Mattie." "I thought that you would be sitting here, thinking of it." "Thinking of what, Mattie?" "Ah! you don't tell me anything now--but I can guess--and Mr. Sidney did not sit in the parlour all the evening for nothing!" "No, Mattie; but it's not a downright engagement yet. I'm to try if I can like Sidney first." "That's the best way--didn't I say that this would happen some day, Miss Harriet?" "But it hasn't happened yet." "Ah! but it will--I see it all now as plain as a book. I said only last night that things were coming round nicely for us all. And they are--they are!" Harriet began to cry, and to beg Mattie to desist. For an instant the sanguine assertion sounded like a vain prophecy, and jarred strangely on her nerves, bringing forth tears and heavy sobs, and a fear of that future which stretched forth radiantly beyond to Mattie's vision. After all, Harriet was but a girl, and had not thought very deeply of all that the contract implied between Sidney and herself. And after all, _were_ things coming round nicely?--or was the red glow in the sky lurid and threatening to her, and more than her? This is scarcely a quiet story, and we are not through our first volume. What does the astute novel-reader think? END OF BOOK THE SECOND. BOOK III. UNDER SUSPICION. CHAPTER I. AN OLD FRIEND. Mr. Wesden retired from business. After thirty or forty years' application to the arduous task of "keeping house and home together," after much hesitation as to whether it were safe and practicable and he could afford it; after a struggle with his old habits of shop-keeping, and a deliberate survey of his position from all points of the compass, he migrated from Great Suffolk Street, and settled down in what he considered country--a back street in the Camberwell New Road, commanding views of a cabbage-field, a public house, and another back street in course of formation by an enterprising builder.