The house in Norfolk Street was more frequented by the learned than ever. They came to discuss Mr. Erin’s late visit to the Shakespearean shrine, just as faithful Moslems might come to interview some pious friend who had recently made his pilgrimage to Mecca. While they talked of relics and signatures her mind reverted to the sweet-smelling old garden at Shottery, with its settle outside the cottage door. Frank Dennis came as usual, and was made welcome by his host, if not quite with the same heartiness as of old. Not a word of love passed his lips, and he was even more reserved and silent than of yore; but Margaret could not conceal from herself what he came for. Nay, his very reticence had a significance for her; she had a suspicion that he had noticed some change of manner between herself and her cousin which for the present sealed his lips. When he had quite convinced himself that her heart was in another’s keeping she felt that he would go away, and that place by the window, where he usually sat a little apart from the antiquarian circle, would know him no more. She pitied him as she pitied Willie, though in another way. She recognised in him some noble qualities—gentleness, modesty, a love of truth and justice, and a generosity of heart that extended even to a rival. If she had not known William Henry, it might have been possible to her, she sometimes thought, to have loved Frank Dennis. But this was only when the former was not present. At the end of the day, when her cousin came in fagged and dispirited, and took his place at the supper-table with little notice from any one, her whole soul seemed to go forth to meet him in her tender eyes. Matters thus continued for some weeks, till, rather suddenly, a change took place in William Henry. In some respects it was not for the better; the unrest which his features had hitherto displayed disappeared, and was succeeded by an earnest and almost painful gravity. Once only she had seen such an expression—on the face of a juggler in the street, one evening, who had thrown knives into the air and caught them as they fell. But with it there was a certain new-born hope. She recognised it in the looks he stole at her when he thought himself unobserved, and in his talk and manner to others, especially to Mr. Erin. They suggested confidence, or at least a purpose. That he said nothing of what he had in his mind to her was in itself significant. The conclusion she drew was that he was on the track of some discovery which might or might not prove of great importance. Poor fellow! she had too often seen her uncle and his friends led by wildfire of this sort to the brink of disappointment to put much faith in it. They were old and used to failures, and with a little grunt of disappointment settled their wigs upon their foreheads, and started off again at a jog-trot in search of another mare’s-nest. Whereas to Willie—he was but seventeen—Repulse would seem like Ruin.