Stephen indeed was one of Meynell's chief anxieties during these intermediate hours, when a strong man took a few days' breathing space between the effort that had been, and the effort that was to be. The young man would come over, day by day, with the same crushed, patient look, now bringing news to Meynell which they talked over where none might overhear, and now craving news from Paris in return. As to Stephen's own report, Barron, it seemed, had made all arrangements to send Maurice to a firm of English merchants trading at Riga. The head of the firm was under an old financial obligation to Henry Barron, and Stephen had no doubt that his father had made it heavily worth their while to give his brother this fresh chance of an honest life. There had been, Stephen believed, some terrible scenes between the father and son, and Stephen neither felt nor professed to feel any hope for the future. Barron intended himself to accompany Maurice to Riga and settle him there. Afterward he talked of a journey to the Cape. Meanwhile the White House was shut up, and poor Theresa had come to join Stephen in the little vicarage whence the course of events in the coming year would certainly drive him out. So much for the news he gave. As to the news he hungered for, Meynell had but crumbs to give him. To neither Stephen nor any one else could Alice Puttenham's letters be disclosed. Meynell's lips were sealed upon her story now as they had ever been; and, however shrewdly he might guess at Stephen's guesses, he said nothing, and Stephen asked nothing on the subject. As to Hester, he was told that she was well, though often moody and excitable, that she seemed already to have tired of the lessons and occupations she had taken up with such prodigious energy at the beginning of her stay, and that she had made violent friends with a young teacher from the Ecole Normale, a refined, intelligent woman, in every way fit to be her companion, with whom on holidays she sometimes made long excursions out of Paris. But to Meynell, poor Alice Puttenham poured out all the bitterness of her heart: "It seems to me that the little hold I had over her, and the small affection she had for me when we arrived here, are both now less than they were. During the last week especially (the letter was dated the fourteenth of January) I have been at my wits' end how to amuse or please her. She resents being watched and managed more than ever. One feels there is a tumult in her soul to which we have no access. Her teachers complain of her temper and her caprice. And yet she dazzles and fascinates as much as ever. I suspect she doesn't sleep--she has a worn look quite unnatural at her age--but it makes her furious to be asked. Sometimes, indeed, she seems to melt toward me; the sombre look passes away, and she is melancholy and soft, with tears in her eyes now and then, which I dare not notice.