With this slender thread of hope Mr. Binney travelled home to Russell Square that afternoon in sad and lonely dejection. His head still ached after his excesses of the previous night, and his mood was so dark that he put off the confession which he knew he should have to make to Mrs. Higginbotham, until the next morning. As he dined in solitary state that evening, attended by his neat and soft-footed maids, he found himself wondering how the habits and customs of twenty years could have broken down so completely under the influence of new surroundings. Two years ago he would have been the first to hold up pious hands of horror at the mere mention of an orgie such as he had taken part in the night before. And, having returned once more to his accustomed manner of life, he felt just as far apart from it as he would have done then. But he could not keep his thoughts away for long from the dark fact that he had just been expelled from the University for continuous bad conduct, and it will be agreed that this cannot have been a pleasant recollection for a middle-aged gentleman with a grown-up son.
Dr. Toller had promised Mr. Binney that he would keep to himself all mention of the scene he had surprised. His doing so was only another example of the eternal self-complaisance of human nature. Dr. Toller was about as capable of keeping anything to himself that his wife wanted to hear about, as a puppy is of holding a stick that its master wants to take away. At twelve o'clock Dr. Toller returned from Cambridge to the wife of his bosom. By a quarter past, Mrs. Toller was in possession of the main outlines of his story, which had been filled in before the half hour struck by all the details that Dr. Toller's memory could supply.
"You won't tell anyone else what has happened, my dear, will you?" said Dr. Toller, when his wife had extracted all the information from him he was capable of affording.
"I shall tell what I please to whomsoever I please," said Mrs. Toller.
"But, my dear, my promise," expostulated the doctor.
"Bother your promise!" said Mrs. Toller, as she went out of the room.
After breakfast the next morning Mr. Binney, to whom another day had brought no cessation of the gnawing pains of remorse, took his courage in both hands, and putting on his hat and coat, went round to Woburn Square.
The maid who opened the door to him gave a little start. "Mrs. Higginbotham is not at home, sir," she said. "But she told me to give you this little parcel if you happened to call."
Mr. Binney took the parcel, neatly tied up and directed in Mrs. Higginbotham's well-known writing. "Do you know when Mrs. Higginbotham will be in?" he asked.
The maid hesitated. "She told me to say she was not at home, sir," she repeated awkwardly, and Mr. Binney went down the steps with the terrible realisation hammering at his brain, that Mrs. Higginbotham had heard of his disgrace and refused to receive him.