Dixon brought her some tea, and told her that his mistress and Miss Edna were having theirs in the dressing-room. Later on, as she went indoors to prepare for dinner, she encountered Richard; he had just driven up to the door in his dog-cart, and Brand and Gelert were with him. "Where is Mr. Sinclair?" she ventured to ask, as he smiled at seeing her. "He has gone," he replied. "I have just driven him to the station. Do you know where my mother is to be found?" "I have not seen her since luncheon," answered Bessie. "I think she is with Edna." "Very likely. I will go and see." And Richard sprung up the staircase three steps at a time. Bessie thought he looked tired and worried, too; and to add to the general oppression, a storm seemed gathering, for the air felt unusually still and sultry. Edna did not join them at dinner, and the meal was hardly more festive than the luncheon had been. Mrs. Sefton hardly opened her lips, and Richard only made a few general remarks. Bessie expected that her evening would be as solitary as her afternoon, but, rather to her surprise, Mrs. Sefton beckoned her to sit down beside her. "My dear," she said, "you are feeling very uncomfortable, I can see, and you do not like to ask questions; you think something is the matter, and you are right. Edna is making us all very unhappy. She has quarrelled with Neville, and has broken off her engagement with him, and nothing that Richard or I can say to her will induce her to listen to reason." "Oh, Mrs. Sefton, how dreadful!" "Yes, is it not heart-breaking? Poor Neville! and he is so devoted to her. They were to have been married next spring, but now Edna declares that nothing would induce her to marry him. She will have it that he is jealous and monopolizing, and that he distrusts her. Over and over again she told us both that she would be the slave of no man's caprice. Of course it is all her temper; she is just mad with him because he is always in the right, and she knows how ungenerously she has acted; but bye and bye she will repent, and break her heart, for she is certainly fond of him, and then it will be too late." "And she has really sent him away?" "Yes; she told him to go, that she never wanted to see him again; and he has gone, poor fellow! Richard drove him to the station. He says he never saw a man so terribly cut up, but he told Richard, just at the last, that perhaps it might prove the best for them in the end, that they were not suited to each other, and never had been, but that Edna had never shown him her temper quite so plainly before." "Oh, Mrs. Sefton, how terrible it all seems! Can nothing be done?"