A few days were necessarily lost in travelling; and what so good as the long compulsory seclusion of a railway carriage, shutting you absolutely up with yourself, while the long lines of country, plain, and hill sweep pass, and all the outside hurry and bustle do nothing but make the whirling silence of the box in which you are enclosed more complete--for the feeding of anxiety and cherishing of all troublous thoughts? The mere certainty that he must not surrender himself to his fears had given him a certain power of self-control so long as he remained at Vienna, which now abandoned him altogether. His mind was in a fever by the time he reached London. It was late at night, and the only thing he could do was to throw himself into a cab and drive to Durant’s chambers in the Temple, where, in all the commotion of his feverish thoughts, he was brought to a sudden standstill by the information that Durant was out of London, engaged on the business of the Commission on which he had been appointed. He had not even heard of this commission; for Lewis had been reluctant to write of the many events which had lately occurred, not knowing what his friend might think of his own half-permitted betrothal, or whether it was not best that Nancy should have an undisturbed moment to make her way with the family at Oakley. This had kept Durant silent for longer than was, perhaps, quite friendly; but, as fate would have it, he had taken heart of grace at last, and had written to Arthur on the very day on which Arthur had left Vienna; and the letter which would have given so much information arrived in the one capital just as the person to whom it was addressed reached the other. He was cruelly disappointed by Durant’s absence. It seemed something like a crime in the confusion of his thoughts. What was any public commission in the world to the commission which affected his friend’s happiness, the succour of a woman who was to that friend more than all the world beside? Arthur could scarcely keep his patience even with the innocent laundress who answered his questions. He went into his friend’s room, and found there his own letter announcing his coming, which had arrived only a few hours before him, and which he tore vehemently into a hundred pieces. But all his rage and vehemence could do nothing for him. He was obliged to go away, to go to an hotel, and in utter impossibility of doing anything, to eat and to sleep, which, perhaps, saved him from a fever. It was all that could be done that night. CHAPTER XII.