‘A lady gave it me at the door.’

’Then I’d thank ladies to mind their own business.  And you never take anything else at the door; do you understand that, Jack?’

‘Yes, father.’

Bunce turned to Gilbert, who was waiting to depart.

’Miss Nancarrow tells me she can’t go to Eastbourne on Saturday.  But she says Miss Trent’s very anxious to go instead of her.  What do you think of it?’

Grail reflected.  The plan pleased him on the whole, though he had just a doubt whether Thyrza ought to travel by herself.

‘I see no reason why she shouldn’t,’ he said.  ’It’ll be a pleasure to her, and I shall be glad to have her do you the kindness.’

‘Then could I see her before Saturday?’

‘Come in to-morrow night, will you?’

The second course of lectures was at an end.  Egremont had only delivered one a week since Christmas, and even so it cost him no little effort to spread his ‘Thoughts for the Present’ over the three months, Latterly he had blended a good deal of historical disquisition with his prophecy:  the result was to himself profoundly unsatisfactory.  He sighed with relief as he dismissed his poor little audience for the last time.  For the future he had made no promises, beyond saying that in his library-building there were two rooms which were to be devoted to lectures.  The library itself was now his chief care.  This was something solid; it would re-establish him in his self-confidence.

Yes; ‘Thoughts for the Present’ had been a failure.

The first lecture was far away the best.  It dealt with Religion.  Addressed to an audience ready for such philosophical views, it would have met with a flattering reception.  Egremont’s point of view was, strictly, the aesthetic; he aimed at replacing religious enthusiasm, as commonly understood, by aesthetic.  The loveliness of the Christian legend—­from that he started.  He dealt with the New Testament very much as he had formerly dealt with the Elizabethan poets.  He would have no appeal to the vulgar by aggressive rationalists.  Let rationalism filter down in the course of time; the vulgar were not prepared for it as yet.  It was bad that they should be superstitious, but worse, far worse, that they should be brutally irreverent, and brutal irreverence inevitably came of atheism preached at the street corner.  The men who preached it were themselves the very last to guide human souls; they were of coarsest fibre, without a note of music in them, fit only for the world’s grosser purposes.  And they presumed to attack the ministry of Christ!  It was good, all that he had to say on that point, the better that it made two or three of his hearers feel a little sore and indignant.  Yet, as a whole, the lecture appealed to but one of the audience.  Gilbert Grail heard it with emotion, and carried it away in his heart.  To the others it was little more than the sounding of brass and the tinkling of cymbals.