They found Caroline in a state of emotion, bordering upon hysteria. Fear, anger, perplexity, and despair, succeeding each other so rapidly that her mood may have been said to savour of the whole at once. Poor Caroline Cray knew nothing of either endurance or reticence; her anger against Mark was great at the present moment, and she gave way to it loudly. "Where is he?" was the first pointed question of Miss Davenal. "I don't know where he is. He might have trusted me. It's not his fault if the water has come into the mine, and he had no cause to go away; but if he had gone, he might have taken me. Barker has been down here in a dreadful passion, and says Mark was not a good fellow to steal a march on him and leave him alone all day to fight the battle with the shareholders. A hundred people, about, have been here after Mark, and it's a shame that I should be left to hear all the remarks." "Is Oswald Cray with you?" asked Miss Bettina. "Oh, my goodness, I don't suppose he'll come here again," returned poor Caroline, half beside herself. "I thought him cold and queer in his manner today. Barker says he is vexed at losing his thousand pounds; and that Mark got two hundred more from him last night after he knew the mine had gone. Oswald said nothing to me, but of course he is incensed at it." Miss Davenal had been listening with her hand to her ear, and she heard pretty well. "Do you know the particulars of the calamity?" she asked. "Is the mine irretrievably ruined!" "I don't know anything, except that I'm fit to go mad," she answered, beginning to sob like a petulant child. In that one first moment of the blow Miss Davenal was generous enough to spare reproaches for all the folly of the past, though she had plenty at her tongue's end. She had not sat down since she entered; she had stood rigid and upright; and when she went out to the fly she ordered it to Mr. Oswald Cray's. "Tell the man to drive quickly," said Miss Bettina to Neal. "What do you say, Sara? Let you stop with Caroline? Caroline wants neither you nor me; I can see that. There'll be trouble over this." Mrs. Cray had not chosen an inapt word when she said Oswald must be incensed against Mark. It was precisely Oswald's present state of feeling. He saw that the thousand pounds had been nothing but a stopgap; not drawn from him for his own good and benefit, as Mark so largely boasted, but for Mark's own necessities. And as to the two hundred pounds of the previous night, the money of the firm--Oswald did boil over at the thought of that. Oh, why could not Mark have been upright and open! why could he not have gone to Oswald with the truth upon his lip, and said, Let me have this two hundred pounds in my dire necessity, and I will repay you when I can! Oswald was not the brother to refuse him.