Totty Nancarrow was an active ally in the search, though Lydia did not know it.  Totty, as soon as that unfortunate game of cross-purposes with Luke Ackroyd had come to an end, experienced a revival of all her kindness for Thyrza.  Privately she was of opinion that no faith whatever should be given to Egremont’s self-defence.  In concert with Ackroyd, she even planned an elaborate scheme for tracking Egremont in his goings hither and thither.  They discovered that he was very seldom at his rooms in Great Russell Street, but their resources did not allow them to keep a watch upon him when he was away from town, which appeared to be very frequently the case.  Circumstances of a darkly suggestive kind they accumulated in abundance, and for weeks constantly believed themselves on the point of discovering something.  Bunce was taken into their confidence, but he, poor fellow, had occupation enough for his leisure at home, since Bessie was at Eastbourne.  Little Nelly Bunce often fretted in vain for the attentions of ‘Miss Nanco,’ upon whom she had begun to feel a claim.  ‘Miss Nanco,’ for the nonce a female detective, had little time for nursing.

And Gilbert Grail was once more going to his daily labour, not at the same factory, however, for he too could not mix with men who knew him.  About a fortnight after the day on which he should have been married, he got a place at candle-works in Battersea.  He could not leave the house in Walnut Tree Walk, for he, as persistently as Lydia, clung to the hope that Thyrza might reappear in her home some night.  To go away would be to say good-bye for ever to that dream which had so glorified a few months of his life, and in spite of all he could not do that.

In comparison with his own, the suffering of others seemed trifling.  When his mother went about in silence, bending more than she had done, all interest in the things of life and in her studies of Swedenborg at an end, he thought that much of it was due to her wish to show sympathy with him.  When Lydia sat through an hour with her face hidden in her hands, he knew that the day had been very dark and weary with her, but said in himself that a sister’s love was little compared with such as his.  He would not reason on what had happened, save when to do so with Lydia brought him comfort; alone, he brooded over his hope.  It was the only way to save himself from madness.

On the day after seeing Egremont he received a long letter from him.  Egremont wrote from his heart, and with a force of sincerity which must have swept away any doubts, had such still lingered with the reader.  The inevitable antagonism of the personal interview was a pain in his memory; if the intercourse of friendship was for ever at an end for them, he could not bear to part in this way, with hesitating words, with doubts and reticences.  ’In your bitter misery,’ he said, ’you may accuse me of affecting sympathy which I do not feel, and may scorn my expressions of grief as a cheap way of