“DEAR SIR,

“We have at length been able to trace the person concerning whom you are in communication with us.  He is at present living in Bristol, and we think is likely to remain there for a short time yet.  Will you favour us with a call, or make an appointment elsewhere?

“We have the honour to be, dear Sir,

“Yours faithfully,

“TULKS & CROWE.”

He paced the room, holding the letter behind his back.  It was more than three weeks since the investigation referred to had been committed to Messrs. Tulks & Crowe, private inquiry agents; and long before this he had grown careless whether they succeeded or not.  An impulse of curiosity; nothing more.  Well, yes; a fondness for playing with secrets, a disposition to get power into his hands—­ excited to activity just after a long pleasant talk with Lilian.  He was sorry this letter had come; yet it made him smile, which perhaps nothing else would have done just now.

“To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering.”  The quotation was often in his mind, and he had never felt its force so profoundly as this afternoon.  The worst of it was, he did not believe himself a victim of inherent weakness; rather of circumstances which persistently baffled him.  But it came to the same thing.  Was he never to know the joy of vigorous action?—­of asserting himself to some notable result?

He could do so now, if he chose.  In his hand were strings, which, if he liked to pull them, would topple down a goodly edifice, with uproar and dust and amazement indescribable:  so slight an effort, so incommensurable an outcome!  He had it in his power to shock the conventional propriety of a whole town, and doubtless, to some extent, of all England.  What a vast joke that would be—­to look at no other aspect of the matter!  The screamings of imbecile morality —­the confusion of party zeal—­the roaring of indignant pulpits!

He laughed outright.

But no; of course it was only an amusing dream.  Ho was not malignant enough.  The old-fashioned sense of honour was too strong in him.  Pooh!  He would go and dine, and then laugh away his evening somewhere or other.

Carefully he burnt the letter.  To-morrow he would look in at the office of those people, hear their story, and so have done with it.

Next morning he was still in the same mind.  He went to Tulks & Crowe’s, and spent about an hour closeted with the senior member of that useful firm.  “A benevolent interest—­anxious to help the poor devil if possible—­miserable story, that of the marriage—­was to be hoped that the girl would be persuaded to acknowledge him, and help him to lead an honest life—­no idea where she was.”  The information he received was very full and satisfactory; on the spot he paid for it, and issued into the street again with tolerably easy mind.

To-morrow he must run down to Polterham again.  How to pass the rest of to. day?  Pressing business was all off his hands, and he did not care to look up any of his acquaintances; he was not in the mood for talk.  Uncertain about the future, he had decided to warehouse the furniture, pictures, and so on, that belonged to him.  Perhaps it would be well if he occupied himself in going through his papers—­ makicg a selection for the fire.