"you see we're so dreadfully busy just now with this
confounded suit I went down to Bury about--'Bowler _versus_ Stumps';
but if you can amuse yourself till two o'clock we'll go and have a jolly
good walk to shake up an appetite for dinner."

"The very thing," replied I; "I have a letter to Harry Oaklands which
has been on the stocks for the last four days, and which I particularly
wish to finish, and then I'm your man, for a ten-mile trot if you like
it."

"So be it, then," said Freddy, leaving the room as he spoke.

As soon as he was gone, instead of fetching my half-written epistle I
flung myself into an arm-chair, and devoted myself to the profitable
employment of conjecturing the possible cause of Clara Saville's strange
agitation on receiving that letter. Who could it be from?--perhaps
her guardian;--but if so, why should she have given a start of
surprise?--nothing could have been more natural or probable than that he
should write and say when she might expect him home--she could not have
felt surprise at the sight of his handwriting--but if not from him, from
whom could it come? She had told me that she had no near relations, no
intimate friend. A lover perchance--well, and if it were so, what was
that to me?--nothing--oh yes! decidedly nothing--a favoured lover of
course, else why the emotion?--was this also nothing?--yes, I said
it was, and I tried to think so too: yet, viewing the matter so
philosophically, it was rather inconsistent to spring from my seat as if
an adder had stung me, and begin striding up and down the room as though
I were walking for a wager. In the course of my rapid promenade, my
coat-tail brushed against and nearly knocked down an inkstand, to which
incident I was indebted for the recollection of my unfinished letter
to Oaklands, and, my own thoughts being at that moment no over-pleasant
companions, I was glad of any excuse to get rid of them. On looking
about for my writing-case, however, I remembered that, when last I made
use of it, we were sitting in the boudoir, and that there it had ~278~~
probably remained ever since; accordingly, without further waste of
time, I ran upstairs to look for it.

As good Mrs. Coleman (although she most indignantly repelled the
accusation) was sometimes accustomed to indulge her propensity for
napping even in a morning, I opened the door of the boudoir, and closed
it again after me as noiselessly as possible. My precautions, however,
did not seem