and with what they could muster between them it
would be little to the credit of their star, however
pale, that defeat and surrender surrender so early,
so immediate should have to ensue. It was not
indeed that he thought of that disaster as, at the
worst, a direct sacrifice of their possibilities: he im
aged it which was enough as some proved van
ity, some exposed fatuity, in the idea of bringing
Mrs. Lowder round. When, shortly afterwards, in
this lady's vast drawing-room the apartments at
Lancaster Gate had struck him from the first as of
prodigious extent he awaited her, at her request,
conveyed in a " reply-paid " telegram, his theory
was that of their still clinging to their idea, though
with a sense of the difficulty of it really enlarged to
the scale of the place.

He had the place for a long time- it seemed to
him a quarter of an hour to himself; and while
Aunt Maud kept him and kept him, while observa
tion and reflection crowded on him, he asked him
self what was to be expected of a person who could
treat one like that. The visit, the hour were of
her own proposing, so that her delay, no doubt,
was but part of a general plan of putting him to
inconvenience. As he walked to and fro, however,
taking in the message of her massive, florid furni
ture, the immense expression of her signs and sym
bols, he had as little doubt of the inconvenience he
was prepared to suffer. He found himself even fac
ing the thought that he had nothing to fall back

[[85]]

p084 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p085w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p086

v?