When next Miss Malcolm met Edward Clare there was a coolness in her greeting which the young man could not mistake. ‘What have I done to offend you, Laura?’ he asked, piteously. ‘I am offended with everyone who doubts the honour of my future husband,’ she answered. ‘I’m sorry for that,’ he said, gloomily. ‘A man cannot help his thoughts.’ ‘A man can hold his tongue,’ said Laura. ‘Well, I will be silent henceforth. Good-bye.’ ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Anywhere, anywhere out of the world; that is to say out of this little world of Hazlehurst. I think I am going to London. I shall take a lodging close to the British Museum, and work hard at literature. It is time I made my mark.’ Laura thought so too. Edward had been talking of making his mark for the last five years, but the mark as yet was a very feeble one. Next day he was gone, and Laura had a sense of relief in his absence. Celia stayed at the Manor-house during the time before the wedding. She was always in attendance upon the lovers, drove with them, walked with them, sat by the fire with them at the cheery, dusky afternoon tea time, when those mysterious shadows that looked like guardian angels came and went upon the walls. John Treverton seemed to have no objection to Celia’s company, he rather courted it, even. He was not an ardent lover, Celia thought; and yet it would have been difficult to doubt that he was deeply in love. Never since that first evening had Laura’s head rested against his breast, never since then had he given full and unrestrained utterance to his passion. His manner was full of reverent affection; as if he respected his betrothed almost too deeply to be lavish in the expression of warmer feeling; as if she stood so high above him in his thoughts of her that love was a kind of worship. ‘I think I should like a more demonstrative lover,’ said Celia, with a critical air. ‘Mr. Treverton is so awfully serious.’ ‘And now that you have seen more of him, Celia, are you still inclined to think that he is mercenary; that it is the estate and not me he cares for?’ asked Laura, with no fear as to the answer. ‘No, dear, I honestly believe that he adores you, that he is dreadfully, desperately, almost despairingly, in love with you,’ answered Celia, very seriously, ‘but still he is not my style of lover. He is too melancholy.’ Laura had no answer to this objection. As the days had hurried on towards the end of this eventful year her lover’s spirits had assuredly not grown lighter. He was full of thought, curiously absent-minded at times. She, too, grew grave in sympathy with him. ‘It is such a solemn crisis of our lives,’ she thought. ‘Sometimes I feel as if all things could not go happily to the end, as if something must happen to part us, at the very last, on the eve of our wedding day.’