But to no purpose; for still no trace of Edwin
Drood revisited the light of the sun.
Setting his watches for that night again, so that vigilant eyes
should be kept on every change of tide, he went home exhausted.
Unkempt and disordered, bedaubed with mud that had dried upon him,
and with much of his clothing torn to rags, he had but just dropped
into his easy-chair, when Mr. Grewgious stood before him.
'This is strange news,' said Mr. Grewgious.
'Strange and fearful news.'
Jasper had merely lifted up his heavy eyes to say it, and now
dropped them again as he drooped, worn out, over one side of his
easy-chair.
Mr. Grewgious smoothed his head and face, and stood looking at the
fire.
'How is your ward?' asked Jasper, after a time, in a faint,
fatigued voice.
'Poor little thing! You may imagine her condition.'
'Have you seen his sister?' inquired Jasper, as before.
'Whose?'
The curtness of the counter-question, and the cool, slow manner in
which, as he put it, Mr. Grewgious moved his eyes from the fire to
his companion's face, might at any other time have been
exasperating. In his depression and exhaustion, Jasper merely
opened his eyes to say: 'The suspected young man's.'
'Do you suspect him?' asked Mr. Grewgious.
'I don't know what to think. I cannot make up my mind.'
'Nor I,' said Mr. Grewgious. 'But as you spoke of him as the
suspected young man, I thought you HAD made up your mind. - I have
just left Miss Landless.'
'What is her state?'
'Defiance of all suspicion, and unbounded faith in her brother.
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