"You shall see Magdalen before you go back." He left the room, after making that reply, and withdrew to his study.
The books lay ready to his hand as usual.

He opened one of them and set himself to read in the customary manner.

But his attention wandered; and his eyes strayed away, from time to time, to the empty chair opposite--the chair in which his old friend and gossip had sat and wrangled with him good-humoredly for many and many a year past.

After a struggle with himself he closed the book.

"D--n the chair!" he said: "it _will_ talk of him; and I must listen." He reached down his pipe from the wall and mechanically filled it with tobacco.