his eyes to stray to the right hand or the left, and kept them directed with hungry, relentless steadiness straight along the path of his desires.  He had received no second letter from his mother, nor had Alice anything to report of danger-signals at home; from Emma herself came a letter regularly once a week, a letter of perfect patience, chiefly concerned with her sister’s health.  He had made up his mind to declare nothing till the irretrievable step was taken, when reproaches only could befall him; to Alice as little as to any one else had he breathed of his purposes.  And he could no longer even take into account the uncertainty of his success; to doubt of that would have been insufferable at the point which he had reached in self-abandonment.  Yet day after day saw the postponement of the question which would decide his fate.  Between him and Mrs. Waltham the language of allusion was at length put aside; he spoke plainly of his wishes, and sought her encouragement.  This was not wanting, but the mother begged for time.  Let the day of the ceremony come and go.

Richard passed through it in a state of exaltation and anxiety which bordered on fever.  Mr. Westlake and his wife came down from London by an early train, and he went over New Wanley with them before luncheon.  The luncheon itself did not lack festive vivacity; Richard, in surveying his guests from the head of the board, had feelings not unlike those wherein King Polycrates lulled himself of old; there wanted, in truth, one thing to complete his self-complacence, but an extra glass or two of wine enrubied his imagination, and he already saw Adela’s face smiling to him from the table’s unoccupied end.  What was such conquest in comparison with that which fate had accorded him?

There was a satisfactory gathering to hear Mr. Westlake’s address; Richard did not fail to note the presence of a few reporters, only it seemed to him that their pencils might have been more active.  Here, too, was Adela at length; every time his name was uttered, perforce she heard; every encomium bestowed upon him by the various speakers was to him like a new bud on the tree of hope.  After all, why should he feel this humility towards her?  What man of prominence, of merit, at all like his own would ever seek her hand?  The semblance of chivalry which occasionally stirred within him was, in fact, quite inconsistent with his reasoned view of things; the English working class has, on the whole, as little of that quality as any other people in an elementary stage of civilisation.  He was a man, she a woman.  A lady, to be sure, but then—­