‘Run up to town to-day? Tom, you have heard something; you know more than we do--’ ‘Nothing of the sort: but I feel a responsibility. He is your brother, and that poor girl met him in our house. I must see what it means. I can’t let it run on like this. She has no brother to stand up for her. I want to know what the fellow means.’ ‘Tom, you must not go and bully Oliver. He would never stand that, even when he was a boy.’ ‘I have no intention of bullying him. I want to know what he means,’ Mr. Ford repeated doggedly. And then Trix, what with fear lest his interference should be resented, what with eagerness to solve the mystery, insisted on going too; to which her husband did not object, having foreseen it. She went out immediately and told Grace. The sense of being about to do something is a great matter to a woman who in most emergencies of her life is compelled to wait while others do what is to be done. Action restores trust to her, and a sense that all must come right. ‘Tom and I are going. Tom has business of his own, and he takes this opportunity: and he thinks I may as well go too, and then this mystery will be cleared up. I shall telegraph to you at once, the moment I have seen him, Grace.’ Grace was greatly startled by this sudden resolution, though she said very little. But when they started by the afternoon train, she was there at the station to meet them. ‘I think I will go, too,’ she said. ‘You know I have a great deal of--shopping to do.’ And not a word was said by which a stranger could have divined that this was an expedition, not of shopping, but of outraged love and despair. They arrived late with a sort of understanding that nothing could be done that night. But when the ladies had been settled in their hotel, Mr. Ford went out to take, as he said, a walk. He went through the gloomy streets; through the Strand, with all its noise and crowd, to the Temple, where Oliver’s chambers were. He had not told his wife even where he was going. He thought there might be something to learn which it would be better these women should not hear; and perhaps he thought, too, that it would be a triumph, without their aid, to lead the wanderer back. He went all that long way on foot, thinking within himself that the later he was the more likely he was to find Oliver, and turning over in his mind what he should say. He would represent to him the folly of his behaviour, the madness of throwing thus his best hopes away. Ford was very anxious, more anxious than he would have confessed to anyone. He did not, indeed, think of such a possibility as that which had really happened; but his mind was prepared for some complication, some entanglement that had to be got rid of; perhaps even some tie made in earlier years which Oliver believed himself to have got rid of, and which had come to life again, as such things will. Who could tell? He might have married and have thought his