“The all will soon be told,” cried Tom hastily, and with affected unconcern; “but it is not worth while to bore my father with it now. You will hear enough of it to-morrow, sir. We have just been amusing my mother, just within the last week, to get up a few scenes, a mere trifle. Such incessant rains almost since October began, that we have been confined to the house. I have hardly taken out a gun since the 3rd. There has been no attempting anything since. Though, I never saw Mansfield Wood so full of pheasants in my life as this year. I hope you will take a day’s sport there yourself, sir, soon.”

For the present the danger was over, and Fanny’s sick feelings subsided. But when tea was brought in, Sir Thomas got up, saying he could no longer be in the house without looking into his own dear room. He was gone before anything had been said to prepare him for the change he must find there; and a pause of alarm followed his disappearance. Edmund was the first to speak—

“Something must be done,” said he.

“It is time to think of our visitors,” said Maria, still feeling her hand pressed to Henry Crawford’s heart, and caring little for anything else. “Where did you leave Miss Crawford, Fanny?”

Fanny told of their departure, and delivered their message.

“Then poor Yates is all alone,” cried Tom. “I will go and fetch him.”

To the theatre he went, and reached it just in time to witness the first meeting of his father and his friend. Sir Thomas had been a good deal surprised to find candles burning in his room; and on casting his eye round it, to see other symptoms of recent habitation and a general air of confusion in the furniture.

A solitary servant—new to Sir Thomas, and a rather shabby and lumbering fellow—stood bumping into a wall for several long rather stunning moments before apparently finding a proper doorway and making himself scarce without even a proper bow of greeting.

The removal of the bookcase from before the billiard-room door struck Sir Thomas especially, but he had hardly any time to feel astonished at all this, before there were sounds from the billiard-room to astonish him still further. Someone was talking there in a very loud accent; he did not know the voice—more than talking—not quite howling, but almost hallooing.