be composed of Ixionides: that way lies wisdom, and his index was cut
that way.

Arrived in town, he ran over the headings of his letters, in no degree
anxious for a communication from Wales. There was none. Why none?

She might as well have scrawled her announcement of an event pleasing to
her, and, by the calculation, important to him, if not particularly
interesting. The mother's wifeish lines would, perhaps, have been tested
in a furnace. He smarted at the blank of any, of even two or three
formal words. She sulked? 'I am not a fallen lamb!' he said. Evidently
one had to be a shivering beast in trouble, to excite her to move a hand.

Through so slight a fissure as this piece of discontent cracked in him,
the crowd of his grievances with the woman rushed pell-mell, deluging
young shoots of sweeter feelings. She sulked! If that woman could not
get the command, he was to know her incapable of submission. After
besmutting the name she had filched from him, she let him understand that
there was no intention to repent. Possibly she meant war. In which case
a man must fly, or stand assailed by the most intolerable of vulgar
farces;--to be compared to a pelting of one on the stage.

The time came for him to knock at doors and face his public.




CHAPTER XXVIII

BY CONCESSIONS TO MISTRESS GOSSIP A FURTHER INTRUSION IS AVERTED