Subsequently, later than usual, he performed his usual mental penance for it.  In consequence, the wrath, and the wish, and the penitence, haunted him, each swelling to possession of him in turn; until they united to head a plunge into retrospects; which led to his reviewing the army of charges against Mrs. Burman.

And of this he grew ashamed, attributing it to the morbid indulgence in reflection:  a disease never afflicting him anterior to the stupid fall on London Bridge.  He rubbed instinctively for the punctilio-bump, and could cheat his fancy to think a remainder of it there, just below, half an inch to the right of, the spot where a phrenologist, invited by Nataly in old days, had marked philo-progenitiveness on his capacious and enviable cerebrum.  He knew well it was a fancy.  But it was a fact also, that since the day of the fall (never, save in merest glimpses, before that day), he had taken to look behind him, as though an eye had been knocked in the back of his head.

Then, was that day of the announcement of Lakelands to Nataly, to be accounted a gloomy day?  He would not have it so.

She was happily occupied with her purchases of furniture, Fredi with her singing lessons, and he with his business; a grasp of many ribands, reining-in or letting loose; always enjoyable in the act.  Recently only had he known when at home, a relaxation, a positive pleasure in looking forward to the hours of the City office.  This was odd, but so it was; and looking homeward from the City, he had a sense of disappointment when it was not Concert evening.  The Cormyns, the Yatts, and Priscilla Graves, and Pempton, foolish fellow, and that bothering Barmby, and Peridon and Catkin, were the lineing of his nest.  Well, and so they had been before Lakelands rose.  What had induced! . . . he suddenly felt foreign to himself.  The shrouded figure of his lost Idea on London Bridge went by.

A peep into the folds of the shroud was granted him:—­Is it a truth, that if we are great owners of money, we are so swollen with a force not native to us, as to be precipitated into acts the downright contrary of our tastes?

He inquired it of his tastes, which have the bad habit of unmeasured phrasing when they are displeased, and so they yield no rational answer.  Still he gave heed to violent extraneous harpings against money.  Epigrams of Colney’s; abuse of it and the owners of it by Socialist orators reported in some newspaper corner; had him by the ears.

They ceased in the presence of Lady Grace Halley, who entered his office to tell him she was leaving town for Whinfold, her husband’s family-seat, where the dear man lay in evil case.  She signified her resignation to the decrees from above, saying generously: 

‘You look troubled, my friend.  Any bad City news?’