From this period might be dated the real commencement of Hilton’s education.  He returned to the Branscomes’ house, sedulously schooled his looks and his words, save when betrayed into an occasional denunciation of the marriage laws, and succeeded at last in overcoming a distaste which Mr. Branscome unaccountably evinced for him.  To a certain extent, also, he was taken up by social entertainers.  There was an element of romance in the life he had led which appealed favourably to the seekers after novelty—­“a second St. Simeon Skylights” he had been rashly termed by one good lady, whose wealth outweighed her learning.  At first his gathering crowd of acquaintances only served to fence him more closely within himself; but as he began to realise that this was only the unit of another crowd, a crowd of designs and intentions working darkly, even he, sustained by the strength of a single aim, felt himself whirling at times.  Thus he slowly grew to some knowledge of the difficulties and complications which must beset any young girl like Kate Alden, whose nearest relation and chaperon had been a feather-headed cousin not so many years her elder.  At last, in a dim way, he began to see the possibility of replacing his bitterness with pity.  For Mrs. Branscome did not love her husband; he plainly perceived that, if only from the formal precision with which she performed her duties.  She appeared to him, indeed, to be paying off an obligation rather than working out the intention of her life.

The actual solution of his perplexities came by an accident.  Amongst the visitors who fell under Hilton’s observation at the Branscomes’ was a certain Mr. Marston, a complacent widower of some five-and-thirty years, and Branscome’s fellow servant at the Admiralty.  Hilton’s attention was attracted to this man by the air of embarrassment with which Mrs. Branscome received his approaches.  Resolute to neglect no clue, however slight, David sought Marston’s companionship, and, as a reward, discovered one afternoon in a Crown Derby teacup on the mantel-shelf of the latter’s room his own present of two years back.  The exclamation which this discovery extorted aroused Marston.

“What’s up?”

“Where did you get this?”

“Why?  Have you seen it before?”

The question pointed out to David the need of wariness.

“No!” he answered.  “Its shape rather struck me, that’s all.  The emblem of a conquest, I suppose?”

The invitation stumbled awkwardly from unaccustomed lips, but Marston noticed no more than the words.  He was chewing the cud of a disappointment and answered with a short laugh: 

“No!  Rather of a rebuff.  The lady tore her hand away in a hurry—­the link on the bracelet was thin, I suppose.  Anyway, that was left in my hand.”

“You were proposing to her?”

“Well, hardly.  I was married at the time.”