'My dear Mrs.Scott,' said he, 'I am very sorry that an engagement prevents my going to you this evening; but, as I judge by your letter, and by what I have heard from Gertrude, that you are anxious about this trust arrangement, I will call at ten to-morrow morning on my way to the office.' Having written and dispatched this, he sat for an hour leaning with his elbows on the table and his hands clasped, looking with apparent earnestness at the rows of books which stood inverted before him, trying to make up his mind as to what step he should now take.
Not that he sat an hour undisturbed.

Every five minutes some one would come knocking at the door; the name of some aspirant to the Civil Service would be brought to him, or the card of some influential gentleman desirous of having a little job perpetrated in favour of his own peculiarly interesting, but perhaps not very highly-educated, young candidate.

But on this morning Alaric would see no one; to every such intruder he sent a reply that he was too deeply engaged at the present moment to see any one.
After one he would be at liberty, &c., &c.
And so he sat and looked at the books; but he could in nowise make up his mind.

He could in nowise bring himself even to try to make up his mind--that is, to make any true effort towards doing so.

His thoughts would run off from him, not into the happy outer world, but into a multitude of noisy, unpleasant paths, all intimately connected with his present misery, but none of which led him at all towards the conclusions at which he would fain arrive.