The clock roused him, striking the hour.

He rose hurriedly, and advanced toward the window. As he crossed
the room, he passed by a mirror. His own sullen despair looked at
him in the reflection of his face. "She will be back directly,"
he remembered; "she mustn't see me like this!" He went on to the
window to divert his mind (and so to clear his face) by watching
the stream of life flowing by in the busy street. Artificial
cheerfulness, assumed love in Sydney's presence--that was what
his life had come to already.

If he had known that she had gone out, seeking a temporary
separation, with _his_ fear of self-betrayal--if he had suspected
that she, too, had thoughts which must be concealed: sad
forebodings of losing her hold on his heart, terrifying
suspicions that he was already comparing her, to her own
disadvantage, with the wife whom he had deserted--if he had made
these discoveries, what would the end have been? But she had,
thus far, escaped the danger of exciting his distrust. That she
loved him, he knew. That she had begun to doubt his attachment to
her he would not have believed, if his oldest friend had declared
it on the best evidence. She had said to him, that morning, at
breakfast: "There was a good woman who used to let lodgings here
in London, and who was very kind to me when I was a child;" and
she had asked leave to go to the house, and inquire if that
friendly landlady was still living--with nothing visibly
constrained in her smile, and with no faltering tone in her
voice. It was not until she was out in the street that the
tell-tale tears came into her eyes, and the bitter sigh broke