He consumed bits of breakfast, with a sour confession that a newspaper-article had hit him at last, and stunningly.

Hat and coat were called for.  The state of aimlessness in hot perplexity demands a show of action.  Whither to go first was as obscure as what to do.  Diana said of the Englishman’s hat and coat, that she supposed they were to make him a walking presentment of the house he had shut up behind him.  A shot of the eye at the glass confirmed the likeness, but with a ruefully wry-faced repudiation of it internally:—­Not so shut up! the reverse of that-a common babbler.

However, there was no doubt of Diana.  First he would call on her.  The pleasantest dose in perturbations of the kind is instinctively taken first.  She would console, perhaps direct him to guess how the secret had leaked.  But so suddenly, immediately!  It was inexplicable.

Sudden and immediate consequences were experienced.  On the steps of his house his way was blocked by the arrival of Mr. Quintin Manx, who jumped out of a cab, bellowing interjections and interrogations in a breath.  Was there anything in that article?  He had read it at breakfast, and it had choked him.  Dacier was due at a house and could not wait:  he said, rather sharply, he was not responsible for newspaper articles.  Quintin Manx, a senior gentleman and junior landowner, vowed that no Minister intending to sell the country should treat him as a sheep.  The shepherd might go; he would not carry his flock with him.  But was there a twinkle of probability in the story? . . . that article!  Dacier was unable to inform him; he was very hurried, had to keep an appointment.

‘If I let you go, will you come and lunch with me at two?’ said Quintin.

To get rid of him, Dacier nodded and agreed.

‘Two o’clock, mind!’ was bawled at his heels as he walked off with his long stride, unceremoniously leaving the pursy gentleman of sixty to settle with his cabman far to the rear.

CHAPTER XXXIV

In which it is darkly seen how the criminal’s judge may be love’s criminal

When we are losing balance on a precipice we do not think much of the thing we have clutched for support.  Our balance is restored and we have not fallen; that is the comfortable reflection:  we stand as others do, and we will for the future be warned to avoid the dizzy stations which cry for resources beyond a common equilibrium, and where a slip precipitates us to ruin.

When, further, it is a woman planted in a burning blush, having to idealize her feminine weakness, that she may not rebuke herself for grovelling, the mean material acts by which she sustains a tottering position are speedily swallowed in the one pervading flame.  She sees but an ashen curl of the path she has traversed to safety, if anything.