No doubt the man would do his worst, and very bad it would be to him.  At the moment he was so cowed by fear that he would have given half his fortune to have secured the woman’s silence,—­and the man’s.  How much better would it have been had he acceded to the man’s first demand as to restitution of a portion of the sum paid for Polyeuka, before the woman’s name had been brought into the matter at all?

But reflections such as these were now useless and he must do something.  It was for his wife’s sake,—­he assured himself,—­for his wife’s sake that he allowed himself to be made thus miserable by the presence of this wretched creature.  What would she not be called upon to suffer?  The woman no doubt would be brought before magistrates and judges, and would be made to swear that she was his wife.  The whole story of his life in Australia would be made public,—­and there was so much that could not be made public without overwhelming her with sorrow!  His own father, too, who had surrendered the estate to him, must know it all.  His father hitherto had not heard the name of Mrs. Smith, and had been told only of Crinkett’s dishonest successes and dishonest failures.  When Caldigate had spoken of Crinkett to his father, he had done so with a triumph as of a man whom he had weighed and measured and made use of,—­whose frauds and cunning he had conquered by his own honesty and better knowledge.  Now he could no longer weigh and measure and make use of Crinkett.  Crinkett had been a joke to him in talking with his father.  But Crinkett was no joke now.

While walking through the College quad, he was half stupefied by his confusion, and was aware that such was his condition.  But going out under the gate he paused for a moment and shook himself.  He must at any rate summon his own powers to his aid at the moment and resolve what he would do.  However bad all this might be, there was a better course and a worse.  If he allowed this confusion to master him he would probably be betrayed into the worse course.  Now, at this moment, in what way would it become him to act?  He drew himself together, shaking his head and shoulders,—­so as to shake off his weakness,—­pressing his foot for a moment on the earth so as to convince himself of his own firmness, and then he resolved.

He was on the way out to see his mother-in-law, but he thought that nothing now could be gained by going to Chesterton.  It was not impossible that Crinkett might have been there.  If so the man would have told something of his story; and his wife’s mother was the last person in the world whom, under such circumstances, he could hope to satisfy.  He must tell no lie to any one; he must at least conceal nothing of the things as they occurred now.  He must not allow it to be first told by Crinkett that they two had seen each other in the Gardens.  But he could not declare this to Mrs. Bolton.  For the present, the less he saw of Mrs. Bolton the better.  She would come to the christening to-morrow,—­unless indeed Crinkett had already told enough to induce her to change her mind,—­but after that any intimacy with the house at Chesterton had better be postponed till this had all been settled.