At Jewdwine’s heart there was trouble and in his mind perfect peace.  For he knew his own mind at last, though he was still a little indefinite as to the exact condition of his heart.

Three days after Maddox’s extraordinary disclosures Lucia had become most obviously and inconsiderately ill; and had given her cousin Edith a great deal of trouble as well as a severe fright, till Kitty, also frightened, had carried her off to Devonshire out of the house of the Jewdwines.  To Horace the working of events was on the whole beneficent.  Lucia’s change of attitude, her illness, her abrupt departure, though too unpleasant for his fastidious mind to dwell upon, had committed that mind irretrievably to the path of prudence.

So prudent was he, that of his saner matrimonial project the world in general took no note.  Secure of the affections of Miss Fulcher, he had propitiated rumour by the fiction of his engagement to Lucia.  Rumour, adding a touch of certainty to the story, had handed it on to Rickman by way of Maddox and Miss Roots.  He there upon left off beautifying his house at Ealing, and agreed with Maddox that after Paris in November they should go on to Italy together, and that he would winter there for his health.

But by November there came more rumours, rumours of the breaking off of the engagement; rumours of some mysterious illness of Lucia’s as the cause.  They reached Rickman in the week before the date fixed for the production of The Triumph of Life in Paris.  He was paying a farewell call on Miss Roots, who became inscrutable at the mention of Lucia’s name.  He accused her with violence of keeping the truth from him, and implored her with pathos to tell it him at once.  But Miss Roots had no truth, no certain truth to tell; there were only rumours.  Miss Roots knew nothing but that Lucia had been lying on her back for months; she conjectured that possibly there might be something the matter with her spine.  Her mother had been delicate, and Sir Frederick, well, the less said about Sir Frederick the better.  Rickman retreated, followed by Miss Roots.  As for an engagement, she was not aware that there ever had been one; there was once, she admitted half-way downstairs, an understanding, probably misunderstood.  He had better ask Horace Jewdwine straight out.  “But,” she assured him from the doorstep, “it would take an earthquake to get the truth out of him.”

He flung himself into a hansom, and was one with the driver in imprecation at the never-ending, ever-increasing gradient of the hill.  The delay, however, enabled him to find Jewdwine at home and alone.  He was aware that the interview presented difficulties, but none deterred him.

Jewdwine, questioned as to his engagement, betrayed no surprise; for with Rickman the unusual was to be expected.  He might not have condescended to answer Rickman, his obscure disciple, but he felt that some concession must be made to the illustrious dramatist.