They left the room. Harry departed by the back way to have a word with Mary, and to offer to come and sit up that night with Edmund, who was much worse. The offer was accepted, and Harry went away. The midday meal was again a very sad one. Myles ate nothing, and said nothing; and Mary, full of fears and forebodings, was almost as bad. After dinner the young man went out again--up the street he hated, to the room which had become a purgatory to him. How he loathed the sight of that long building with the many windows and the well-known faces! It seemed to him as if every eye must be fixed upon him, every finger pointing at him. Work was not over until late that afternoon. It was six o’clock, or after, when Myles got home again, and on going into the house found that Mary was sitting upstairs with Edmund; so, after brooding a little, his mind full of wild, half-chaotic projects and ideas, he left the house and wandered out, he knew not whither. At last he found himself in the park, pacing about the broad terrace, and looking with eyes that saw nothing, across the idle town and the nearer hills, to the blue, calm, moorland ridges far away to the north. It was a scene he had loved, half unconsciously, from his childhood up, but to-day it was without joy--almost without existence for him. At last he seated himself on a bench situated in a kind of rockery which ran along one side of the terrace; the seat was a little retired in a hollow of the rockwork, and there he remained, and gradually he turned his back upon the prospect and his face to the wall, and hid his face in his arm and fought alone, as well as he could, with the misery and despair which rushed over him like a flood. He saw no point of cheerfulness or light in all his life’s sky. All was black and thick and overcast. ‘This is no fit place for me to stay in,’ he thought. ‘I must get away as soon as I can. If I go, all the lies will die out quickly enough, and then--there’s another man who is ready to fight her battles for her, and he may see her as much as he pleases, and there’s no harm in it.’ How long he had remained there motionless and miserable he did not know. He had forgotten all outside things, and was busied solely with his wretched self-introspection. At last, however, distant voices first, and then approaching footsteps, which advanced slowly and with many pauses, penetrated to his abstracted ear. He did not move; why should any one notice him, or think of him? Still less did he move when he distinctly heard and recognised Sebastian Mallory’s voice close to him saying, ‘And then slander will be silenced, and there will be no more misunderstandings. All will be clear between us.’ His voice was deep with love as he spoke, and to each vibration of it Myles’s heart seemed to give an answering throb. ‘Quite clear, as it should be,’ replied the voice he loved best, and it trembled too.