‘I may be able to help a little—­I hope!’ she fetched a breath to say, while her eyelids mildly sermonized; and immediately she talked of her inheritance of property in stocks and shares.

Victor commented passingly on the soundness of them, and talked of projects he entertained:—­Parliament!  ’But I have only to mention it at home, and my poor girl will set in for shrinking.’

He doated on the diverse aspect of the gallant woman of the world.

‘You succeed in everything you do,’ said she, and she cordially believed it; and that belief set the neighbour memory palpitating.  Success folded her waist, was warm upon her lips:  she worshipped the figure of Success.

‘I can’t consent to fail, it’s true, when my mind is on a thing,’ Victor rejoined.

He looked his mind on Lady Grace.  The shiver of a maid went over her.  These transparent visages, where the thought which is half design is perceived as a lightning, strike lightning into the physically feebler.  Her hand begged, with the open palm, her head shook thrice; and though she did not step back, he bowed to the negation, and then she gave him a grateful shadow of a smile, relieved, with a startled view of how greatly relieved, by that sympathetic deference in the wake of the capturing intrepidity.

‘I am to name Tuesday for Dudley?’ she suggested.

‘At any hour he pleases to appoint.’

‘A visit signifies . . .’

‘Whatever it signifies!’

‘I’m thinking of the bit of annoyance.’

‘To me?  Anything appointed, finds me ready the next minute.’

Her smile was flatteringly bright.  ’By the way, keep your City people close about you:  entertain as much as possible; dine them,’ she said.

‘At home?’

’Better.  Sir Rodwell Blachington, Sir Abraham Quatley:  and their wives.  There’s no drawing back now.  And I will meet them.’

She received a compliment.  She was on the foot to go.

But she had forgotten the Tiddler mine.

The Tiddler mine was leisurely mounting.  Victor stated the figures; he saluted her hand, and Lady Grace passed out, with her heart on the top of them, and a buzz about it of the unexpected having occurred She had her experiences to match new patterns in events; though not very many.  Compared with gambling, the game of love was an idle entertainment.  Compared with other players, this man was gifted.

Victor went in to Mr. Inchling’s room, and kept Inchling from speaking, that he might admire him for he knew not what, or knew not well what.  The good fellow was devoted to his wife.  Victor in old days had called the wife Mrs. Grundy.  She gossiped, she was censorious; she knew—­could not but know—­the facts; yet never by a shade was she disrespectful.  He had a curious recollection of how his knowledge of Inchling and his wife being always in concert, entirely—­whatever they might think in private—­devoted to him in action, had influenced, if it had not originally sprung, his resolve to cast off the pestilential cloak of obscurity shortening his days, and emerge before a world he could illumine to give him back splendid reflections.  Inchling and his wife, it was:  because the two were one:  and if one, and subservient to him, knowing all the story, why, it foreshadowed a conquered world.