take a return ticket and jolt
my old bones down to Cumberland, on the chance of persuading him to
adopt the just, the independent, and the honourable course. It was a
poor chance enough, no doubt, but when I had tried it my conscience
would be at ease. I should then have done all that a man in my
position could do to serve the interests of my old friend's only child.

The weather on Saturday was beautiful, a west wind and a bright sun.
Having felt latterly a return of that fulness and oppression of the
head, against which my doctor warned me so seriously more than two
years since, I resolved to take the opportunity of getting a little
extra exercise by sending my bag on before me and walking to the
terminus in Euston Square. As I came out into Holborn a gentleman
walking by rapidly stopped and spoke to me. It was Mr. Walter Hartright.

If he had not been the first to greet me I should certainly have passed
him. He was so changed that I hardly knew him again. His face looked
pale and haggard--his manner was hurried and uncertain--and his dress,
which I remembered as neat and gentlemanlike when I saw him at
Limmeridge, was so slovenly now that I should really have been ashamed
of the appearance of it on one of my own clerks.

"Have you been long back from Cumberland?" he asked. "I heard from
Miss Halcombe lately. I am aware that Sir Percival Glyde's explanation
has been considered satisfactory. Will the marriage take place soon? Do
you happen to know Mr. Gilmore?"

He spoke so fast, and crowded his questions together so strangely and
confusedly, that I could hardly follow him. However accidentally
intimate he might have been with the family at Limmeridge, I could not
see that he had any right to expect information on their private
affairs, and I determined to drop him, as easily as might be, on the
subject of Miss Fairlie's marriage.

"Time will show, Mr. Hartright," I said--"time will show. I dare say
if we look out for the marriage in the papers we shall not be far
wrong. Excuse my noticing it, but I am sorry to see you not looking so
well as you were when we last met."

A momentary nervous contraction quivered about his lips and eyes, and
made me half reproach myself for having answered him in such a
significantly guarded manner.

"I had no right to ask about her marriage," he said bitterly. "I must
wait to see it in the newspapers like other people. Yes,"--he went on
before I could make any apolog