nothing--for that best of all reasons, that there was nothing to do. “You don’t seem to have made progress, however,” he said, on the first night. “No, perhaps I have not made much progress. I don’t know that I expected to make much progress--at this time of the year. You know in winter one only sees one’s neighbours, who know nothing. Later on, when the weather improves, when there is more coming and going, when I have more opportunities----” This did not sound very cheerful, but it was still less cheerful when he saw how little even his mother’s mind was occupied with his affairs. It was not her fault; all the thinking in the world could not make Bee’s motives more clear to a woman living at a distance of three or four broad counties from Bee. And one of Aubrey’s married sisters was in some family difficulty which occupied all her mother’s thoughts. Aubrey did not refuse to be interested in his sister. He was willing to give anything he could, either of sympathy or help, to the solving of her problem; but, conscious of so much in his own fate that was harder than could fall to the lot of any comfortable, middle-aged person, it must be allowed that he got very tired of hearing of Mary’s troubles. He answered rather curtly on one or two occasions, and chilled his mother, whose heart was full of Mary, and who was already disposed to blame herself in respect to Aubrey, yet to be irritated by any suspicion of blame from him. On the last morning of his stay he had begged her, if she could abstract her thoughts for a moment from Mary, to think of him. “I don’t want to trouble you further, mother. I only want you to tell me if you think my whole business so hopeless that I had better give every expectation up?” “Think your business hopeless, Aubrey? Oh, no; I don’t think that.” “But we know just as much now as we did in October. I do not think we have advanced a step----” “If you mean to reproach me with my want of success, Aubrey!” “No--I don’t mean to reproach you with anything, mother. But I think it seems just as hopeless as ever--and not a step nearer.” “Things cannot be done in a moment,” she said, hurriedly. “I never expected--When the summer comes round, when one sees more people, when one can really pursue one’s inquiries----.” Mrs. Leigh was very conscious that she had pursued few inquiries, and the thought made her angry. “Rome,” she added, “was not built in a day.” Aubrey Leigh said no more--but he went back to London feeling that he was a beaten man, and the battle once more lost. CHAPTER XI. THERE is nothing more curious in life than the way in which it closes over those great incidents that shape its course. Like a stone disappearing in a pool, the slow circles of commotion widen and melt away, the missile sinks into the depths of the water, and tranquility comes back to its surface. Every ripple is gone, and yet the stone is always there.