On the second day—it was a Sunday—Lavender called about ten o’clock, bringing me news of which more hereafter; suffice it that a great burden was lifted off my mind. Having been prevented attending morning service by the detective’s visit, I went to church in the evening; but returned little the better, spiritually, I fear, for an hour’s sermon in which the preacher—a portly, well-nourished personage just then very popular in the fashionable world—dilated with much unction upon the terrors of hell, and the extreme difficulty of avoiding them, the impossibility of so doing, in fact, for ninety-nine hundredths of even ‘professing Christians’—so called—let alone the not inconsiderable remainder of the human race. What a gospel to set forth! What a Moloch to offer as supreme object of adoration! Yet this congregation, so representative of rank and wealth, listened quite complacently, without the smallest evidence of criticism or of revolt. Had they no heart to feel with? No brains with which to think? I walked homeward disturbed and sad. Before the portico of Lord Longmoor’s house stood a travelling carriage, off which the men-servants were loading down a mighty array of boxes and trunks. And it was Lady Longmoor herself, surely—I could not mistake the buoyant step, the gay poise of the head, as of one that should say, ‘Look, good people all, look! I like it, I am well worth it’—who swept up the steps and into the lighted hall! Why this sudden descent of her Magnificence, and whence? I made my way round to the side-door and let myself in, unperceived as I hoped. But in the corridor William met me with a somewhat distracted countenance. ‘My lord is asking for you, sir,’ he said. ‘He arrived back about half an hour ago. I persuaded him to dine at once. His lordship seems quite upset, sir—not at all well. But he was very urgent to see you directly, whenever you came in.’ I own my pulse quickened as I went along the corridor and into the dining-room, where I found Hartover at table. He turned round, but without rising, and held out both hands to me. ‘Oh! there you are, thank goodness,’ he said. ‘I have been haunted by a childish fear you would have vanished—been spirited back to Cambridge.’ I forced a laugh and inquired after Lord Longmoor. ‘It is genuine this time. My father is really ill—so ill that I felt obliged to take the disagreeable things he said to me in good part. Oh! you were right to make me go to him, Brownlow. And I must go again. It is scandalous the way he is left to the mercy of doctors, and parsons, and servants—such a crew, upon my word. My stepmother away somewhere—of course amusing herself—I suppose up in the North with—oh! we’ll name no names. Safer not’—he added with a sneer. I enlightened him as to her ladyship’s present whereabouts.