When he jumped into the cab, and the driver had said, "Where to, sir?" he gave his home in Grosvenor Place in answer, simply because he could not think of another direction to give in that bewildering moment: so the cab drove on. But Mark did not want to go to Grosvenor Place. He had nothing to get from there: he had no business there, and a feeling came over him that he had rather not meet his wife just then. He wanted to hide himself and his bewildered mind and his scared face in some nook of remote shelter, far from the haunts of men, where that remorseless crowd, just escaped from, would not pounce upon him. Mark had not given himself time to ascertain that their disposition was pacificatory: he was wondering rather whether they had yet pulled the offices down. Neither Mark Cray nor Caroline was fitted to encounter the storms of life. So long as the sailing was smooth it was well; but when the waves arose, rough and turbulent, the one proved physically, the other morally, unable to breast them. Mark stopped the cab as it was turning into Grosvenor Place; some vague feeling prompting him that it might be safer to steal quietly into his home than to dash up to it in a cab. The tidings had perhaps travelled far and wide, and people might be already there, as well as at the offices. Mark was half determined to make the best of his way at once to the scene of the Great Wheal Bang itself, the mine; and see with his own eyes whether things were so bad that they could not be mended. At least he should be away from his furious enemies in London. One more under the influence of reason than Mark Cray might have thought it well to ascertain whether those enemies were so furious, before running from them. When a man of no moral courage loses his presence of mind, he merits pity perhaps rather than condemnation. "Mark, what's the matter?" With her actual presence before him, with the pointed question on her lips, Mark Cray's indecision went completely out. He could no more have told her the truth at that moment, that the golden prospects so implicitly believed in had turned to ruin, and the offices yonder were being besieged by noisy shareholders, than he could have told it to the besiegers themselves. "The matter?" repeated Mark, at a loss for any other answer. "You look as if something were the matter, Mark. And what have you come back for?" "Oh, I left some papers at home," answered Mark, speaking as carelessly as he could. "There's nothing the matter with me. The fellow drove fast, that's all. I gave him an extra sixpence." Perhaps Caroline did not deem this communication particularly relevant to the subject. "What made you go away so early, Mark?" she asked. "You never settled anything about Hendon today." "Well, I don't think I can go," said Mark. "I'll--I'll see later. Hark!"