What did it mean? Durant could not tell. He had not disliked Nancy; though she had defied him too, it had been done in a way which did not offend the young man. He had admired her, even when she attacked himself personally; and he had been inclined to think as Arthur did, that she was a lily among those weeds. He had not been surprised at his friend’s infatuation. He had thought her a beautiful high-spirited girl, full of a generous if over vehement disdain for the conventional judgment that made her appear an unfit wife for a man of worldly position superior to her own. Her threat to give up her lover, and her counter decision to marry him disinherited, in order to show his friends how little she cared about his money, were fresh in his mind. And he had liked Nancy; though he had been formally on the other side as Lady Curtis’s agent, he had never really been unfriendly; he remembered well his old difficulties when he had tried to persuade Arthur to relinquish his faith to this girl who trusted in him, and with what a sense of relief he had found that all his arguments were vain, and Arthur’s honour and love invulnerable. He was mystified and perplexed, as well as grieved, by Arthur’s painful pre-occupation now, not knowing what could have happened. They went out in the teeth of the March wind, which blew sharp and keen along the suburban roads. “I have not had anything to call a walk for weeks,” Arthur said, with a feverish look of eagerness, as they reached the fresh breadth of the common, with the green fields and country paths beyond. The hedgerows were bristling with buds, the skies softly blue, where they could be seen through the masses of cloud that swept across the great vault overhead. The young man sped along like a loosened greyhound, and his friend, fresh from the confinement of town, had hard ado to follow him. He talked little as he went along. Was he walking so fast to escape some care that weighed upon him? If it was not for that there was no other motive, for the walk was without any object. Now and then he would break forth for a moment about this prospect which Durant had come to offer him. “It would be the best thing,” he would say, “far the best thing. I must get rid of this one way or other.” Then he would be silent, and after a mile or so say to himself again, “Yes, _this_ will not do--I must go, it is plain. Going may be salvation.” Durant did not know what irrepressible cares were plucking at his friend’s skirts and compelling him to these resolutions; and he himself talked calmly of Oakley, of the desires of the family there, and the haste they were in to send him off upon his mission, and all the anticipations of Arthur’s return which they had already begun to entertain. At this Arthur did nothing but shake his head, “Will _she_ consent?” he said once. Would Nancy consent? was that what he meant? Consent! what excuse could she have not to consent? They walked far, at a great pace, and Durant was almost worn out.