Gussy got up when she had delivered this shot, and ran over to the other side of the room to get her work, as she said, leaving Edgar very silent and considerably bewildered. It was a new sensation to him. Was he supposed to mean anything, he wondered? He felt that he had received an arrow, but he did not quite understand how or why it came; and he was a little sore, it must be confessed, to hear himself classed with Arthur Arden as one of the men who meant nothing. In his own consciousness he meant a great deal---- he meant the most cordial brotherliness, affection, and sympathy. He had “taken to” the Thornleighs, as people say. He liked to go to their house; he liked to talk to them all, one almost as much as the others, and Lady Augusta as much as any of her girls. This was what he meant; but could it be that some other meaning was expected of him? Then he noticed with some surprise that Lady Augusta was quite cognisant of the fact that Gussy had left him, and that he was sitting all alone and silent, pondering and confused. Why should she note so very unimportant a transaction? And she called him to her side immediately on a most transparent pretext. “Mr. Arden, come and tell me your last news from Clare,” she said. “It is very hard-hearted of her not to come with you to town. And it must be very dull for her at Arden, all by herself. Has she got old Miss Arden from Escott, or good Mrs. Seldon with her? What, nobody! that must surely be dull even for Clare----” “So I thought,” said Edgar; “but she will not come----” “And she has so rooted a prejudice against those good people the Pimpernels--it is a pity,” said Lady Augusta. “I suppose you know your cousin Arthur Arden is staying there?” “There?” cried Edgar, “at Arden?” and he half rose to go off at once and guard his sister, whose imprudence it seemed impossible to understand. “I mean he is at the Pimpernels;” said Lady Augusta. “Alice, I suppose, will have a good deal of money. I have known the day when Arthur Arden could have done a great deal better than that. But neither men nor women improve their case matrimonially by growing older. It will be curious to see him as the husband of Alice Pimpernel.” “But is it certain that because he is her father’s guest the other must follow?” said Edgar, who asked the question at random, without thinking much about it. The answer was a little pointed, and it found a lodgment in his mind. “Oh dear no, Mr. Arden. But yet the world is apt to ask why does he go there? What does he want in that house? It is a question that is asked whenever a young man visits a great deal at a house where there are girls.”