For a month or more he was kept doing this, chafing at every day as it passed, and growing more and more excited, more and more anxious. By and by Durant wrote that he was making every possible research, but had as yet discovered nothing. And then there arose a very fever of anxious thought in Arthur’s mind. Where could she be? what might she be doing? what privations might she be enduring, what toils, what hardships? All the stories of distress he had ever heard, of proud poverty, of struggles for employment, of Spartan independence starving calmly sooner than ask for a morsel, all the taunts and spurns which patient merit from the unworthy takes, came rushing upon his recollection. While he lived daintily and slept softly, his Nancy, his wife, might be turning away discouraged, penniless, without shelter, from some door which was closed upon her. Heaven above! what could he do? He sent wild advertisements to the “Times,” he wrote ceaseless letters to Durant. Find her! was his cry; though indeed Nancy was spending her time, on the whole, very comfortably, as the reader knows. But Arthur did not think of the little fortune--the two hundred and fifty pounds which was to have been handed over to her sisters. Nothing had been done about it, and it had not found a place in his memory; he did not think of anything reasonable, he only lost himself in a vague cloud of excitement, terror, and anxiety, intensified by the fact that it was impossible for him to get away, and to go in search of her himself. And his troubles were made tenfold greater still by a chance meeting with his Paris friend, Denham, who “thought he had seen” Mrs. Arthur Curtis somewhere, but could not recollect where. Denham knew, as everybody did, that the husband and wife were separated; and he was curious, and ventured upon some leading question to which Arthur in his state of suspense fell a ready victim. He did not conceal that he was anxious, “not having heard from his wife for some time,” he allowed; and then Denham on his side recollected that he had seen her somewhere; where was it he had seen her? Was it in Paris, was it London? he had quite lately come from England; and he could not recollect where it was--at a railway-station somewhere--but where? The impression left upon Arthur’s mind was that she might be coming to him, and this beguiled his anxiety for a few days, making him tremble at every strange sound, and expect day and night her arrival--which never came. This final trial made an end of him, poor fellow! It ruined his chance of sleep, so that his nights and days alike became torment to him. And the probation lasted for more than a month after he had heard that Nancy had left Underhayes--a month--which felt like a century. It was far on in November when at last he was released from his post, and could start for home. For home! where was that, he asked himself, sadly? could it now exist anywhere for him except where