s
anxiety to his old friend and tutor. The proposed visit to Thorpe
Ambrose opened the very prospect of his making friends and connections
suited to him in rank and age which Mr. Brock most desired to see; but
Allan was not to be persuaded; he was obstinate and unreasonable; and
the rector had no alternative but to drop the subject.

One on another the weeks passed monotonously, and Allan showed but
little of the elasticity of his age and character in bearing the
affliction that had made him motherless. He finished and launched his
yacht; but his own journeymen remarked that the work seemed to have lost
its interest for him. It was not natural to the young man to brood
over his solitude and his grief as he was brooding now. As the spring
advanced, Mr. Brock began to feel uneasy about the future, if Allan was
not roused at once by change of scene. After much pondering, the
rector decided on trying a trip to Paris, and on extending the journey
southward if his companion showed an interest in Continental traveling.
Allan's reception of the proposal made atonement for his obstinacy in
refusing to cultivate his cousin's acquaintance; he was willing to go
with Mr. Brock wherever Mr. Brock pleased. The rector took him at his
word, and in the middle of March the two strangely assorted companions
left for London on their way to Paris.

Arrived in London, Mr. Brock found himself unexpectedly face to face
with a new anxiety. The unwelcome subject of Ozias Midwinter, which
had been buried in peace since the beginning of December, rose to the
surface again, and confronted the rector at the very outset of his
travels, more unmanageably than ever.

Mr. Brock's position in dealing with this difficult matter had been
hard enough to maintain when he had first meddled with it. He now found
himself with no vantage-ground left to stand on. Events had so ordered
it that the difference of opinion between Allan and his mother on the
subject of the usher was entirely disassociated with the agitation
which had hastened Mrs. Armadale's death. Allan's resolution to say no
irritating words, and Mr. Brock's reluctance to touch on a disagreeable
topic, had kept them both silent about Midwinter in Mrs. Armadale's
presence during the three days which had intervened between that
person's departure and the appearance of the strange woman in the
village. In the period of suspense and suffering that had followed no
recurrence to the subject of the usher