Lennox and Mannering to bring him news when the telegram dispatched to Scotland Yard was answered, and prepared to leave them.
As he rose, he marked his old spaniel standing whimpering by his side.
"What is the matter with Prince?" he asked.
"He has not had his dinner," said Mary.
"Let him be fed at once," answered her father, and went out alone.
She rose to follow him immediately, but Mannering, who had stopped and was with them, begged her not to do so.
"Leave him to himself," he said. "This has shaken your father, as well it may. He's all right. Make him take his bromide to-night, and let nobody do anything to worry him."
The master of Chadlands meantime went afield, walked half a mile to a favorite spot, and sat down upon a seat that he had there erected. A storm was blowing up from the south-west, and the weather of his mind welcomed it. He alternated between bewilderment and indignation. His own life-long philosophy and trust in the ordered foundations of human existence threatened to fail him entirely before this second stroke. It seemed that the punctual universe was suddenly turned upside down, and had emptied a vial of horror upon his innocent head.
Reality was a thing of the past. A nightmare had taken its place, a nightmare from which there was no waking. He considered the stability of his days—a lifetime followed upon high principles and founded on religious convictions that had
