The wintry rays of the sun were contending unsuccessfully with the strong and cheerful blaze of a bright fire in Charles Yeldham's outer room one morning in December, when that hard-working gentleman emerged from his bedroom at an unusually late hour, and glanced with an expression of satisfaction at the fire, the preparations for breakfast, and the heap of letters and other papers which occupied one end of the small table. Charles Yeldham was looking troubled on this particular day, but not as he usually was, full of the care and preoccupation of his work; his generally concentrated gaze was abstracted; and any one familiar with his expression would have recognised that the subject of his thoughts was not present to his bodily eyes. He seated himself and began to open his letters, having first poured out his tea. They were numerous and various: one from his father, one from his sister, a note from Frere, a number of business letters, and one from Paris. His face changed as he took up this one, changed still more as he read:
"Rue d'Alger, No. --, 9th Dec. 186-.
"Sir,--I fulfil my promise, relying on yours, and believing all you told me of your intentions for the dear lady's good. She is dear and good. She has come back to Paris, and I have seen her.
"I am, sir, your servant,
"Louise Hartmann."
Yeldham's first impulse was to jump up from his untasted breakfast, take his hat and coat, and rush off to find Robert Streightley; but he resisted the impulse, and set himself to consider what would be the best thing to do. Robert had been ailing lately; Yeldham had noticed his altered looks with pain, and he dreaded telling him news except such as was undeniably and completely good. This could not be said to be so. There was no doubt now that the way was opened to communication with Katharine; but much more than communication was involved. So long a time had elapsed, so obstinately had her determination been adhered to, so intense and keen had been her husband's suffering--suffering which none but Yeldham had divined, under Robert's quiet and reticent bearing--that the matter had assumed to Yeldham's mind an aspect of even additional importance. Should he act on the information contained in this note at once, and only tell Robert when he should have seen Katharine and ascertained the state of her feelings, or should he communicate with Robert immediately, and allow him to proceed at once to Paris in search of his wife? In favour of the latter method of proceeding there was the consideration that the mutual position of the estranged pair was one of the utmost pain, and requiring the most delicate handling; and that undoubtedly the husband and wife could alone discuss the matters which divided them with propriety and authority. There was also the consideration of Katharine's excessive pride, which would lead her instinctively and vehemently to resent the interference of a third person. Both these were gravely pondered by Charles Yeldham. In favour of the former method of proceeding were, the comparative composure and hopelessness with which Robert had begun to regard his fate since Yeldham's unsuccessful expedition, the patience with which he acceded to Yeldham's advice that they should not unnecessarily discuss the matter of their most constant thoughts, and the consequent risk, in case all overtures should prove unavailing, of exciting Robert to dangerous agitation and increased grief. Yeldham understood Streightley better than Streightley understood himself; and when he would say, as he constantly did, that he would ask nothing more than to know where his wife was, to be sure that she was more content than he without her, that he had no hope of ever seeing her more, Yeldham knew that he entirely believed what he said, but that he deceived himself; and that with the first intelligence of Katharine new feelings would arise, whose disappointment would be terrible. Added to this, he knew that Robert could not plead his own cause as he, Charles Yeldham, would plead it for him; if she should refuse to see him, Robert, conscience-stricken, would not persevere. Thus the subject had two sides, and he had to regard first the one, and then the other, with great care and deliberation. He did so, and finally decided, all parts of the question balanced, that he would tell Robert he had received the letter for which they had looked so long in vain, and leave it to him to decide on what should be done. "If I went, and failed, he must know it sooner or later," was the result of Yeldham's cogitations; "so he may as well know about this at once."
So Charles Yeldham wrote a note to Robert, requesting him to call on him late in the afternoon, when he should be comparatively at leisure, and proposing that they should dine together in the City afterwards. Then he dismissed the matter from his mind, as far as possible, and went to his "treadmill."
There was nothing unusual in the tone of Yeldham's note--nothing to excite Robert's hopes or fears. He had had several such notes from the writer; and yet he was agitated while he read it, and nervous when he laid it down. He was always nervous now, he said to himself, as he rebuked his own tremors. How unmanly, how weak, how foolish he was becoming--less and less like a man whom she ever could love, he would think, with a degree of despondency which might have proved to him, had he considered his own case in a philosophical light, how much hope had really lurked at the bottom of his abnegation. This nervousness increased as the hour drew near for his interview with Yeldham; and at six o'clock, when the streets were bright with gaslight, and the crisp cold of a clear wintry night had set in, Robert Streightley's hand trembled as he knocked at the outer door of his friend's chambers, and his face was pale. Yeldham observed him closely, and decided on deferring his purposed communication until a later hour. Accordingly he easily gave a plausible turn to his summons of Streightley; the two dined together; and Roberts spirits rose, as they invariably did, under the influence of his old friend's genial temperament.
Yeldham knew that Robert would not deliberately break through the established rule of silence on the subject of Katharine, but that he might be easily led into doing so; and he accordingly gave the conversation a turn which brought it to bear upon the past, and then seized the opportunity. Robert took the communication which his friend made to him with more calmness than Yeldham had anticipated, but he was not in the least sanguine.
"The question now is, Robert, whether you or I shall go to find her and bring her back," said Yeldham in the most cheerful tone he could command.