the illusion of disaster had been, indeed, so complete
and vivid that, even now, more than an hour later,
he had not shaken off its effects.

He applied his mental energies, as he strolled along
the gravel paths, to the task of reassuring himself.
There were still elements of chance in the game,
of course, but it was easy enough, here in the daylight,
to demonstrate that they had been cut down to a minimum--that
it was nonsense to borrow trouble about them. He reviewed
the situation in painstaking detail, and at every point
it was all right, or as nearly all right as any human
business could be. He scolded himself sharply for this
foolish susceptibility to the intimidation of nightmares.
"Look at Plowden!" he bade his dolorous spirit.
"See how easy he takes things."

It was undeniable that Lord Plowden took things very
easily indeed. He had talked with eloquence and feeling
about the miseries and humiliations of a peerage inadequately
endowed with money, but no traces of his sufferings were
visible to Thorpe's observant eye. The nobleman himself looked
the very image of contented prosperity--handsome, buoyant,
light-hearted, and, withal, the best-groomed man in London.
And this ancestral home of his--or of his mother's, since he
seemed to insist upon the distinction--where were its signs
of a stinted income? The place was overrun with servants.
There was a horse which covered a distance of something
like two miles in eight minutes. Inside and out,
Hadlow House suggested nothing but assured plenty.