Meantime the unhappy Braintop received an indication that he must depart.  As he left the hall he brushed past the chief-clerk of his office, who soon appeared bowing and elbowing among the guests.  “What a substitute for me!” thought Braintop bitterly; and in the belief that this old clerk would certainly go back that night, and might undertake his commission, he lingered near the band on the verge of the lawn.  A touch at his elbow startled him.  In the half-light he discerned Emilia.  “Don’t say you have seen me,” were her first words.  But when he gave her the letter, she drew him aside, and read it by the aid of lighted matches held in Braintop’s hat drawing in her fervent breath to a “Yes! yes!” at the close, while she pressed the letter to her throat.  Presently the singing began in an upper room, that had shortly before flashed with sudden light.  Braintop entreated Emilia to go in, and then rejoiced that she had refused.  They stood in a clear night-air, under a yellowing crescent, listening to the voice of an imperial woman.  Impressed as he was, Braintop had, nevertheless, leisure to look out of his vinous mist and notice, with some misgiving, a parading light at a certain distance—­apparently the light of cigarettes being freshly kindled.  He was too much elated to feel alarm:  but “If her father were to catch me again,” he thought.  And with Emilia on his arm!

Mr. Pole’s chief-clerk had brought discomposing news.  He was received by an outburst of “No business, Payne; I won’t have business!”

Turning to Mr. Pericles, the old clerk said:  “I came rather for you, sir, not expecting to find Mr. Pole.”  He was told by Mr. Pericles to speak what he had to say:  and then the guests, who had fallen slightly back, heard a cavernous murmur; and some, whose eyes where on Mr. Pole, observed a sharp conflict of white and red in his face.

“There, there, there, there!” went Mr. Pole. “’Hem, Pericles!” His handkerchief was drawn out; and he became engaged, as it were, in wiping a moisture from the palm of his hand.  “Pericles, have you got pluck now?  Eh?”

Mr. Pericles had leaned down his ear for the whole of the news.

“Ten sossand,” he said, smoothing his waistbands, and then inserting his thumbs into the pits of his waistcoat.  “Also a chance of forty.  Let us not lose time for ze music.”

He walked away.

“I don’t believe in that d—–­d coolness, ma’am,” said Mr. Pole, wheeling round on Freshfield Sumner.  “It’s put on.  That wears a mask; he’s one of those confounded humbugs who wear a mask.  Ten-forty! and all for a shrug; it’s not human.  I tell you, he does that just out of a sort of jealousy to rival me as an Englishman.  Because I’m cool, he must be.  Do you think a mother doesn’t feel the loss of her children?”

“I fear that I must grow petticoats before I can answer purely feminine questions,” said Freshfield.

“Of course—­of course,” assented Mr. Pole; “and a man feels like a mother to his money.  For the moment, he does—­for the moment.  What are those fellows—­Spartans—­women who cut off their breasts—?”