Dick’s feelings during this period were scarcely more to be envied than Georgia’s. Having assured himself that nothing on earth could make him more miserable than he was already, he was fiercely eager that the crown should be given to his misery by Georgia’s engagement to Stratford, for the announcement of which he looked daily, but which did not take place. On the contrary, Stratford went about his work as usual, apparently unconscious that anything of the kind was or could be expected from him, while Georgia looked “about as wretched--well, as I feel!” said Dick to himself. He could not reasonably believe that Stratford cared for her, after his friend’s explicit denial of the fact; but it became abundantly clear to him that he ought to be made to do so, if Georgia’s happiness depended upon it. For a day or two he thought seriously of informing him that he must--under penalties which Dick did not specify to himself--ask her to marry him, since he had evidently been trifling with her feelings; but, happily, a vague impression that a marriage entered upon under such conditions was scarcely likely to turn out well restrained him. The more immediate certainty that Miss Keeling would bitterly resent such an interference in her affairs did not trouble Dick; it maddened him to see her looking as she looked now, and her happiness must be secured in spite of herself. In the meantime, he did his best to hate Stratford, both for his past conduct and his present callousness as to its results, and found it very difficult. The man was his friend and good comrade, and absolutely innocent of any wish to quarrel, and Dick would find himself sitting on the office table and talking familiarly to him as of old. Then he would call up the haunting remembrance of Miss Keeling’s pale face and reproachful eyes, and divided between the desire to avenge her wrongs and the fear of betraying her secret, become so snappish that any one but Stratford would have taken offence and demanded an explanation. But Stratford had a large fund of patience to draw upon, and he was sorry for Dick. He saw that things were not going well with him, and although he was too prudent to seek to interfere, he was determined not to make matters worse by taking up any of the gauntlets which his friend was perpetually flinging down. Another person who viewed the state of things with much interest and uneasiness was Lady Haigh. During her long and philanthropic, if slightly autocratic, experience of English life in the East, she had engineered to a satisfactory conclusion a good many love affairs, and she had welcomed the first signs of this one as affording a fresh scope for the exercise of her particular talent. But she had now for some days been driven to the opinion that Dick and Georgia were playing at cross-purposes, a form of recreation which she regarded with the utmost horror, and she yearned to do something to set matters right.