“It is,” said James with a hollow groan.  “It is, Mr. Lala Roy.  It is a dreadful bad business.”

“Pray, Mr. James,” continued this man with grave, searching eyes which made sinners shake in their shoes, “pray, why did you run away, and where did you go after you opened the shop this morning?  You went to see Mr. Emblem’s grandson, did you not?”

“Yes, I did,” said James.

“Why did you go to see him?”

“I w—­w—­went—­oh, Lord!—­I went to tell him what had happened, because he is master’s grandson, and I thought he ought to know,” said James.

“Did you tell him?”

“No; he has left his lodgings.  I don’t know where he is—­oh, and he always told me the shop was his—­settled on him,” he said.

“He is the Father of Lies; his end will be confusion.  Shame and confusion shall wait upon all who have hearkened unto him or worked with him, until they repent and make atonement.”

“Don’t, Mister Lala Roy—­don’t; you frighten me,” said James.  “Oh, what a dreadful liar he is!”

All the morning the philosopher sat in the bookseller’s chair, and James, in the outer shop, felt that those deep eyes were resting continually upon him, and knew that bit by bit his secret would be dragged from him.  If he could get up and run away—­if a customer would come—­if the dark gentleman would go upstairs—­if he could think of something else!  But none of these things happened, and James, at his table with the paste before him, passed a morning compared with which any seat anywhere in Purgatory would have been comfortable.  Presently a strange feeling came over him, as if some invisible force was pushing and dragging him and forcing him to leave his chair, and throw himself at the Philosopher’s feet and confess everything.  This was the mesmeric effect of those reproachful eyes fixed steadily upon him.  And in the doorway, like some figure in a nightmare—­a figure incongruous and out of place—­the Man in Possession sitting, passive and unconcerned, with one eye on the street and the other on the shop.  Upstairs Mr. Emblem was sitting fast asleep; joy had made him sleepy; and Iris was at work among her pupils’ letters, compiling sums for the Fruiterer, making a paper on Conic Sections for the Cambridge man, and working out Trigonometrical Equations for the young schoolmaster, and her mind full of a solemn exultation and glory, for she was a woman who was loved.  The other things troubled her but little.  Her grandfather would get back his equilibrium of mind; the shop might be shut up, but that mattered little.  Arnold, and Lala Roy, and her grandfather, and herself, would all live together, and she and Arnold would work.  The selfishness of youth is really astonishing.  Nothing—­except perhaps toothache—­can make a girl unhappy who is loved and newly betrothed.  She may say what she pleases, and her face may be a yard long when she speaks of the misfortunes of others, but all the time her heart is dancing.