Opinions were divided again. The girls wanted dancing, the boys blindman's-buff. Mrs. Halliburton was appealed to. "I think it must be dancing first and blindman's-buff afterwards," said she. Tea over, the furniture was pushed aside to clear a space for the dancers. Mr. Halliburton, his back against the wall, stood looking at them. Looking at them as was supposed; but had they been keen observers, they would have known that his eyes in reality saw not: they, like his thoughts, were far away. His wife did presently notice that he seemed particularly abstracted. She came up to him; he was standing with his arms folded, his head bent. "Edgar, are you well?" "Well? Oh yes, dear," he replied, making an effort to rouse himself. "I hope you have no more teaching to-night?" "I ought to go to young Finchley. I put him off until seven o'clock." "Then"--was her quick rejoinder--"if you put off young Finchley, how was it you could not get to Savile-row?" "I have been occupied all the afternoon, Jane," he said. Wanting the courage to say how the matter really stood, he evaded the question. But, to go to young Finchley or to any other pupil that night, Mr. Halliburton felt himself physically unequal. Teach! Explain abstruse Greek and Latin rules, with his mind in its present state! It seemed to him that it mattered little--if he was to be taken from them so soon--whether he ever taught again. He was in the very depths of depression. Suddenly, as he stood looking on, a thought came flashing over him as a ray of light. As a _ray_ of light? Nay, as a whole flood of it. What if Dr. Carrington were wrong?--if it should prove that, in reality, nothing was the matter with him? Doctors--and very clever ones--were, he knew, sometimes mistaken. Perhaps Dr. Carrington had been so! It was _scarcely_ likely, he went on to reason, that a mortal disease should be upon him, and he have lived in ignorance of it! Why, he seemed to have had very little the matter with him; nothing to talk of, nothing to lie up for; comparatively speaking, he had been a healthy man--was in health then. Yes, the belief did present itself that Dr. Carrington was deceived. He, in the interests of the insurance office, might be unnecessarily cautious. Mr. Halliburton left the wall, and grew cheerful and gay, and talked freely to the children. One little lady asked if he would dance with her. He laughed, and felt half inclined to do so. Which was the true mood--that sombre one, or this? Was there nothing _false_ about this one--was there no secret consciousness that it did not accord with his mind's actual belief; that he was only forcing it? Be it as it would, it did not last; in the very middle of a laughing sentence to his own little Janey, the old agony, the fear, returned--returned with terrific violence, as a torrent that has burst its bounds.