morning, not sleeping, remembering moreover how indispensable he
was to Lady Jane, I stole down to the library with a candle. There
wasn't, so far as I could discover, a line of his writing in the
house.



CHAPTER IV.



Returning to town I feverishly collected them all; I picked out
each in its order and held it up to the light. This gave me a
maddening month, in the course of which several things took place.
One of these, the last, I may as well immediately mention, was that
I acted on Vereker's advice: I renounced my ridiculous attempt. I
could really make nothing of the business; it proved a dead loss.
After all I had always, as he had himself noted, liked him; and
what now occurred was simply that my new intelligence and vain
preoccupation damaged my liking. I not only failed to run a
general intention to earth, I found myself missing the subordinate
intentions I had formerly enjoyed. His books didn't even remain
the charming things they had been for me; the exasperation of my
search put me out of conceit of them. Instead of being a pleasure
the more they became a resource the less; for from the moment I was
unable to follow up the author's hint I of course felt it a point
of honour not to make use professionally of my knowledge of them.
I HAD no knowledge--nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I
could bear it--they only annoyed me now. At last they even bored
me, and I accounted for my confusion--perversely, I allow--by the