Edgar came down at his usual hour, bright and light-hearted, as his nature was. He went up to the breakfast table with its vase of roses, and bent his face down over it. “How pleasant Sunday is,” he said, “and how pleasant it is to be at home! I hope you are better this morning, Clare. Could any one help being better in this sweet air and this lovely place? I never thought Arden was half so beautiful. Fancy, there are people in town just now wasting their lives away! I am sure you are better, Clare----” “I--think so,” she said, looking at him anxiously. Had he read them? Had he not read them? That was the question. Her whole soul was bent upon that and that alone. “You are not looking well,” he said, with tender anxiety. “What have you been doing to yourself? I would say I hoped you had missed me; but you don’t look so very glad to see me now--not nearly so glad as I am to see you. If you had come with me to town it might have done you good. And I am sure it would have done me good. It is dreary work living alone--in London above all----” “Not for a man,” said Clare. Her voice was still constrained; but she made a desperate effort, and put away from her as much as she could her disinclination for talk. How unlike he was to other men--how strange that he should not take pleasure in things that everybody else took pleasure in; dreary work living alone, for a young man of his position, in London--how ridiculous it was! “Well, I assure you I found it so,” said Edgar; “if you had been with me, I should have enjoyed it. As it was, I was only amused. The Thornleighs are coming back to-morrow. I saw a great deal of them--more than before they went to town----” Here he paused, and a warmer colour, a certain air of pleasure and content diffused itself over his face. A thrill of pain and apprehension ran through Clare. The Thornleighs!--were they to be brought into the matter too? She half rose from the seat she had taken at the table. “Have you read those letters?” she asked, in a hasty, half-whispering, yet almost stern voice. “What letters? Oh, those you gave me last night! No, not yet. Do you wish me to do it at once? You said it did not matter, I think; or, at least, I understood there was no haste.” “Oh, no haste!” said Clare, with a certain sense of desperation stealing over her; and then she took courage. “I don’t mean that; they have troubled me very much. The sooner you read them, the sooner I shall be relieved, if I am to be relieved. If it would not trouble you too much to go over them to-night?”