He lagged behind his friend as he approached the house. It was still all dark, one faint gleam of firelight in the drawing-room contending feebly with the grey of the twilight, no one at the window looking out for them, no lamp lighted. “Has Mrs. Curtis returned?” Arthur asked of the maid, as they went on, and was answered No. They went into her part of the house, the white little drawing-room, where indeed there were no pretty signs of Nancy’s presence, no work or books to mar the trimness of the place, but all the chairs set against the wall, and the fire flickering dimly in the grate. And the dinner hour came without any appearance of Nancy. Arthur got more and more agitated as the time went on--and Durant more and more surprised. “Is your wife dining out?” he said, when he found they were about to sit down at the table without her. Arthur made no distinct answer; he said after a while, as if he had then heard the question for the first time--“She is at her mother’s.” He did not change his dress before dinner, or show any recollection of the need of such preliminaries, but sat over the fire, vaguely replying now and then when his friend spoke to him, and starting at every sound. “Shall you not wait for Mrs. Curtis?” Durant said, as Arthur took him into the little dining-room. “She is at her mother’s,” was all Arthur replied. Altogether it was very mysterious, and Durant could not but feel that there was mischief in the air. At last when the clock had struck ten, and there was no appearance of Nancy, Arthur sprang to his feet. “I must go and fetch her,” he said, “this will never do--this will never do!” Durant took his hat mechanically also, and they walked out without another word into the windy night. The sky looked widened and enlarged by the boisterous breeze which drove mass after mass of clouds across the blue, and across the face of the waning moon, which shone out at intervals only to be swallowed up again by those floating vapours. There was a certain hurry, and coldness, and agitation in the night. The way from Rose Villas into the lighted street of Underhayes was dark, and the alternations of gloom and light in the sky made the vision uncertain. Durant could see how anxiously his friend peered at all the figures they met on the darkling road; but Nancy was not on her way home. They went on in silence to the street which Durant remembered perfectly, and to the door, at which Arthur left him standing as he went in. He had stood there before, and heard the voices in the parlour when he came here first in search of Arthur; how strange to come here now in search of Arthur’s runaway wife! for this was what it seemed to be now. He could hear the silence which followed Arthur’s entrance--a pause which was impressive from the confusion of voices that had been audible before. “I have come for Nancy,” he heard him say.