At one moment he thought that he would tell his mother everything, and leave her to write an answer to Amelia’s letter.  Should the worst come to the worst, the Ropers could not absolutely destroy him.  That they could bring an action against him, and have him locked up for a term of years, and dismissed from his office, and exposed in all the newspapers, he seemed to know.  That might all, however, be endured, if only the gauntlet could be thrown down for him by some one else.  The one thing which he felt that he could not do was, to write to a girl whom he had professed to love, and tell her that he did not love her.  He knew that he could not himself form such words upon the paper; nor, as he was well aware, could he himself find the courage to tell her to her face that he had changed his mind.  He knew that he must become the victim of his Amelia, unless he could find some friendly knight to do battle in his favour; and then again he thought of his mother.

But when he returned home he was as far as ever from any resolve to tell her how he was situated.  I may say that his walk had done him no good, and that he had not made up his mind to anything.  He had been building those pernicious castles in the air during more than half the time; not castles in the building of which he could make himself happy, as he had done in the old days, but black castles, with cruel dungeons, into which hardly a ray of light could find its way.  In all these edifices his imagination pictured to him Lily as the wife of Mr Crosbie.  He accepted that as a fact, and then went to work in his misery, making her as wretched as himself, through the misconduct and harshness of her husband.  He tried to think, and to resolve what he would do; but there is no task so hard as that of thinking, when the mind has an objection to the matter brought before it.  The mind, under such circumstances, is like a horse that is brought to the water, but refuses to drink.  So Johnny returned to his home, still doubting whether or no he would answer Amelia’s letter.  And if he did not answer it, how would he conduct himself on his return to Burton Crescent?

I need hardly say that Miss Roper, in writing her letter, had been aware of all this, and that Johnny’s position had been carefully prepared for him by his affectionate sweetheart.

CHAPTER XI

Social Life

Mr and Mrs Lupex had eaten a sweetbread together in much connubial bliss on that day which had seen Cradell returning to Mrs Roper’s hospitable board.  They had together eaten a sweetbread, with some other delicacies of the season, in the neighbourhood of the theatre, and had washed down all unkindness with bitter beer and brandy-and-water.  But of this reconciliation Cradell had not heard; and when he saw them come together into the drawing-room, a few minutes after the question he had addressed to Miss Spruce, he was certainly surprised.