‘If she cares for us, and is worth anything, she will come--she will come, if it is only to see Mary. By this I shall know her. If she comes I’ll keep quiet, and try to be satisfied with her--friendship. And if she does not come--I’ll hate her; no, I’ll think no more of her--I’ll forget her, and rid myself of this plague that has been with me ever since I knew her.’ Adrienne did not come; days and weeks went by, and she came not, and Myles did not hate her; he did not cease to think of her. His ‘plague’ tormented him more grievously than ever, and his life was miserable. His days were long; there was only half the usual work to fill them. The weary afternoons and evenings were unutterably long. He sat at home with his books open before him, or he took his way to the reading-room, and sat with more books open before him, and stared at them, and knew nothing about what was in them, while the chimes played ‘Life let us cherish!’ and Myles thought of the hundreds, now daily augmenting, dwelling in the houses beneath those chimes, to whom, in their destitution, the tune must have seemed a sort of melodious mockery. ‘Life let us cherish!’ while the men across the Atlantic were locked in the deadly grip of war, and the cotton manufacture in England was coming steadily, surely to a stand-still. A few more throbs of its mighty pulse--a few more desperate struggles to break through the paralysis that was creeping over it, and then the iron lungs, the great throbbing heart of it, its huge limbs, its vast arteries, would be quiescent--for who should venture to say how long? It was a deadly prospect. With these various causes of distress gnawing perseveringly at his heart, the young man might well be silent, as he set his teeth against the wind, and stooped his head to shield his face from the rain. While Mary, on her side, had cause enough and to spare of unhappiness. The poor girl’s heart was full to bursting of a dread fear that she had had for many weeks now, and concerning which she had not breathed a word to any one. ‘That it should ha’ begun just now!’ she thought to herself; ‘just when times is hard, and work is short, and I can none get him all he should have.’ She kept up a brave face; worked out her daily task at her looms, and her much harder, heart-breaking task at home; had caresses, and smiles, and tender words for Edmund, and a good face to turn to poor Myles, in his gloom, which oppressed her faithful heart like a chill hand laid upon it. She had her meed of consolation for Harry Ashworth, who said he was growing deafer and deafer. She had her own private astonishment at Adrienne’s long absence, but no thought that Adrienne meant any slight or ill-will to her or hers.