Pressure of work at first allowed him no time for unprofitable musing. He had to go down to his partner’s room on business. The office, as usual, was heated to suffocation, and he found Creighton—a most singular state of things—half asleep, or rather in a condition of a sort of semi-torpor, crouching over the fire. He, however, roused himself, and attended to the business in hand with almost his usual perspicacity. But Herries perceived that his energy was but a spurt; it flagged almost instantly. ’You don’t look well, sir,’ he said to the elder man. ’I am not well, Herries,’ Creighton answered heavily, but he said no more, for his breath seemed to catch. ’I must beg of you to excuse my further attendance to-day,’ he gasped out. ’I must—I must go out into the air. I burn—my chest seems weighted. The fresh air would relieve me.’ ’It is very cold, sir,’ said Herries, alarmed by his partner’s symptoms. ’Let me come with you.’ ’Will you?’ said Creighton, wistfully. Herries helped the old man—he seemed suddenly to have become a very old man—into his great-coat. He hardly believed him fit to walk, but the going out seemed to relieve him, as he expected. He drew one or two deep breaths of the icy air, and then walked on, though with a feeble step. ’Take my arm,’ said Herries, kindly. ’We’ll have a turn in the sun, below the castle.’ They proceeded for some way in silence. One subject tormented Herries’s thoughts; he was impelled—unlike himself, somehow—to give it utterance. ’I was right, and you wrong, about a trifle, the other night, Creighton,’ he said. ’A young lady of our acquaintance, who refused my escort up the town, did so because she had something to hide.’ ’Who told you?’ asked Creighton, sharply. ’Lizzie,’ said Herries. ’The lass Mysie told tales when she got home. She was heavily fee’d to hold her tongue about some letter secretly left.’ ’And you tell me,’ exclaimed Creighton, with unexpected energy, ’that you listen to the gossip of servants on such a subject! Fie, for shame, sir! Besides, are you the Grand Turk, or a Catholic Inquisitor, that a girl may not leave a letter on a friend? Just as likely it was not her own letter, but your cousin’s; and as to the feeing, why, ’twas the New Year time, and she would have to fee the lass for her trouble.’ ’A crown is a heavy fee from a girl’s slender purse to a scullion,’ said Herries, moodily. ’I have an inkling,’ he went on, frowning, ’where the letter was left—St. James’s Square, I dare be sworn! We know who lodges there, and the women can no more keep off him than flies from honey.’ ’Bless me!’ said Creighton. ’Are you blaming our poor Rob? Nay, sir, but what a strange, far-fetched idea. I had hardly realised the Bard was known to your cousin, though I think you told me they met some weeks ago.’