The morning’s letters were on the bronze plate in the hall.  Clara passed on her way to her room without inspecting them.  De Craye opened an envelope and went upstairs to scribble a line.  Sir Willoughby observed their absence at the solemn reading to the domestic servants in advance of breakfast.  Three chairs were unoccupied.  Vernon had his own notions of a mechanical service—­and a precious profit he derived from them! but the other two seats returned the stare Willoughby cast at their backs with an impudence that reminded him of his friend Horace’s calling for a book of the trains, when a minute afterward he admitted he was going to stay at the Hall another two days, or three.  The man possessed by jealousy is never in need of matter for it:  he magnifies; grass is jungle, hillocks are mountains.  Willoughby’s legs crossing and uncrossing audibly, and his tight-folded arms and clearing of the throat, were faint indications of his condition.

“Are you in fair health this morning, Willoughby?” Dr. Middleton said to him after he had closed his volumes.

“The thing is not much questioned by those who know me intimately,” he replied.

“Willoughby unwell!” and, “He is health incarnate!” exclaimed the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.

Laetitia grieved for him.  Sun-rays on a pest-stricken city, she thought, were like the smile of his face.  She believed that he deeply loved Clara, and had learned more of her alienation.

He went into the ball to look into the well for the pair of malefactors; on fire with what he could not reveal to a soul.

De Craye was in the housekeeper’s room, talking to young Crossjay, and Mrs. Montague just come up to breakfast.  He had heard the boy chattering, and as the door was ajar he peeped in, and was invited to enter.  Mrs. Montague was very fond of hearing him talk:  he paid her the familiar respect which a lady of fallen fortunes, at a certain period after the fall, enjoys as a befittingly sad souvenir, and the respectfulness of the lord of the house was more chilling.

She bewailed the boy’s trying his constitution with long walks before he had anything in him to walk on.

“And where did you go this morning, my lad?” said De Craye.

“Ah, you know the ground, colonel,” said Crossjay.  “I am hungry!  I shall eat three eggs and some bacon, and buttered cakes, and jam, then begin again, on my second cup of coffee.”

“It’s not braggadocio,” remarked Mrs. Montague.  “He waits empty from five in the morning till nine, and then he comes famished to my table, and cats too much.”

“Oh!  Mrs. Montague, that is what the country people call roemancing.  For, Colonel De Craye, I had a bun at seven o’clock.  Miss Middleton forced me to go and buy it”

“A stale bun, my boy?”

“Yesterday’s:  there wasn’t much of a stopper to you in it, like a new bun.”

“And where did you leave Miss Middleton when you went to buy the bun?  You should never leave a lady; and the street of a country town is lonely at that early hour.  Crossjay, you surprise me.”