And his heart, though it was a middle-aged, and no longer nimble organ given to leaping, jumped up in his breast when he read his letter. There was the possible clue which it was good to hear of--and there was the listener to whom he could tell everything, who took such an entire and flattering share in his anxieties, with whom there was no need to invent excuses, or to conceal anything. Perhaps there were other reasons, too, which he did not put into words. The image which had dazzled him at Oxford rose again before his eyes. It was an image which had already often visited him. One of the handsomest women he had ever seen, and so flattering, so confidential, so deeply impressed by himself, so candid and anxious to blame herself, to place herself in his hands. He went back to town with agreeable instead of painful anticipations. To share one’s cares is always an alleviation--to be able openly to take a friend’s advice. The girls, to whom alone he could be perfectly open on this matter, were such little fools that he had ceased to discuss it with them, if, indeed, he had ever discussed it. And to nobody else could he speak on the subject at all. The opportunity of pouring forth all his speculations and alarms, of hearing the suggestions of another mind--and such a mind as hers--of finding a new clue, was balm to his angry, annoyed and excited spirit. There were other douceurs involved, which were not absent from his thoughts. The pleasure of the woman’s society, who was so flatteringly pleased with his, her mature beauty, which had so much attraction in it, the look of her eyes, which said more than words, the touch--laid upon his for a moment with so much eloquent expression, appeal, sympathy, consolation, provocation--of her beautiful hands. All this was in the Colonel’s mind. He had scarcely known what was the touch of a woman’s hand, at least in this way, during the course of his long, calm domestic life. He had been very fond of his wife, of course, and very tender, as well as he knew how, during her illness, though entirely unconscious of how much he demanded from her even in the course of that illness. But this was utterly different, apart from everything he had ever known. Friendship--that friendship between man and woman which has been the subject of so much sentimental controversy. Somebody whom Miss Lance had quoted to him, some great man in Oxford, had said it was the only real friendship; many others, amongst whom Colonel Kingsward himself had figured when at any moment so ridiculous an argument had crossed his path, denounced it as a mere unfounded fiction to conceal other sentiments. Dolts! It was the Oxford great man who was in the right of it. The only friendship!--with sweetness in it which no man could give, a more entire confidence, a more complete sympathy. He knew that he could say things to Laura--Miss Lance--which he could say to no man, and that a look from her eyes would