h
business of any kind was immediately to become hopelessly and
inextricably involved in it, with much furious buzzing. His mere
presence entangled the plainest matter into a confused cocoon, with
himself struggling in the middle.

Wentworth must save the old autocrat from putting himself in the wrong,
when he was so plainly in the right. Wentworth must at any rate, if he
could do nothing else this morning, read his letters, which had
accumulated during his short absence.

Without moving from his chair he turned over, with a groan, the pile of
envelopes waiting for him at his elbow. Invitations, bills, tenants'
complaints, an unexpected dividend. It was all one to him. The Bishop
of Lostford--so his secretary wrote--accepted Wentworth's invitation to
dine and sleep at Barford that night, after holding a confirmation at
Saundersfoot. Wentworth had forgotten he had asked him. Very well, he
must remember to order a room to be got ready. That was all. A
subscription earnestly solicited by the daughter of a neighbouring
clergyman for a parish library. Why could he not be left in peace? Oh!
what was the use of anything--of life, health, money, intellect, if
existence was always to be like this, if every day was to be like this,
only like this? This weary, dry-as-dust grind, this making a handful of
bricks out of a cartload of straw, this distaste and fatigue, and sense
of being duped by satisfaction, which was only another form of
dissatisfaction, after all. What was the use of living exactly as you
liked, _if you did not like it?_ Oh, Michael! Michael! Michael! He
forgot that he had often been nearly as miserable as this when Michael
had been free and happy. Not quite, but nearly. Now he attributed the
whole of his recurrent wretchedness, which was largely temperamental, to
his distress about his brother's fate.

That wound, never healed, bled afresh. Who felt for him in his trouble?
Who, among all his friends, cared, or understood? No one. That was the
way of the world.

Fay's sweet, forlorn face, snowdrop pale under its long black veil, rose
suddenly before him, as he had seen it some weeks ago, when he had met
her walking in the woods near her father's house. She had gone back to
her old home after the duke's death. She, at least, had grieved for him
and Michael with an intensity which he had never forgotten. Even in her
widowed desolation she had remembered Michael, and always asked after
him when Wentworth went ove