"My poor child!" he exclaimed, with some sudden access of feeling, scarcely intelligible to Susan, and with tears in his eyes. She did not know what it meant, and yet she was very much inclined to cry too. At this moment fortunately Peggy came in unsummoned, bringing the tray, but not the dainty dish which her care had prepared for Mr. Edward. When she set it down upon the table, she addressed the visitor with the tone and manner of one who has something disagreeable to say. "The master's in his study, Mr. Edward: he never comes out on't at this hour of the day. Will you please to step athwart the hall, and see him there?" "Certainly," said Colonel Sutherland, and rose at once, releasing Susan, who could not help feeling a little tremor for the consequences of his visit to her father. The old Colonel himself stepped solemnly, with a certain melancholy in his whole figure and bearing, as he went out of the room. It went to his heart to see the clouded face with which Susan responded to his mention of her father, and he went to meet him forgetting even the discourtesy which did not come to meet him--oppressed, and grieved, and wondering. When he had closed the door behind him he laid his arm on Peggy's arm, detaining her. "What does it all mean?" he asked, with a troubled face, and stooped his deaf ear to Peggy's voice. "What does't mean? Mischief and the devil!--and good reason he has to be proud of his handiwork," cried Peggy, vehemently, though in a whisper; "and oh, Mr. Edward! before the two unfortunate things are killed and murdered, save him from himself!" Perhaps Colonel Sutherland did not perfectly hear this strange communication; he nodded and went on after her, looking puzzled and distressed--he was not of an intrusive or interfering nature. He had no idea of thrusting into any man's secrets, with the view of doing him good. And then, what influence had he, whom after twenty years absence his host would not come to meet. So he went across the hall, stooping his lofty grizzled head, and with a great confusion of grieved thoughts in his mind--while Susan, left behind, went to the window to look for Horace, and stirred the fire into a flame, and placed the tray and the arm-chair in the most comfortable position possible, and trembled a little, in a vague idea that Uncle Edward might somehow dissolve in that awful study, or come out a different man.