Unluckily, on this day of his return, the Oxford skies had put on again their characteristic winter gloom. The wonderful fortnight of frost and sun was over; tempests of wind and deluges of rain were drowning it fast in flood and thaw. The wind shrieked round the little cottage, and though it was little more than three o’clock, darkness was coming fast. Falloden could not keep still. Having made up the fire, he brought in a lamp himself; he drew the curtains, then undrew them again, apparently that he might examine a stretch of the Oxford road just visible through the growing dark; or he wandered in and out of the room, his hands in his pockets, whistling. Otto watched him with a vague annoyance. He himself was horribly tired, and Falloden’s restlessness got on his nerves. At last Falloden said abruptly, pausing in front of him: ‘You’ll have some visitors directly!’ Otto looked up. The gaiety in Falloden’s eyes informed him and at the same time wounded him. ‘Lady Constance?’ he said, affecting indifference. ‘And Mrs. Mulholland. I believe I see their carriage.’ And Falloden, peering into the stormy twilight, opened the garden door and passed out into the rain. Otto remained motionless, bent over the fire. Sorell was talking with the ex-scout in the dining-room, impressing on him certain medical directions. Radowitz suddenly felt himself singularly forlorn and deserted. Of course, Falloden and Constance would marry. He always knew it. He would have served to keep them together, and give them opportunities of meeting, when they might have easily drifted entirely apart. He laughed to himself as he thought of Connie’s impassioned cry—‘I shall never, never, marry him!’ Such are the vows of women. She would marry him; and then what would he, Otto, matter to her or to Falloden any longer? He would have been, no doubt, a useful peg and pretext; but he was not going to intrude on their future bliss. He thought he would go back to Paris. One might as well die there as anywhere.