By the time he got thus far in his meditations he felt intoxicated again, and Mr. Carlyon, who was watching him as he sat there in his chair reading the Times opposite him, wondered what made him suddenly clasp his hands and draw in his breath and smile in that idiotic way while he gazed into space!
Then there would be the afterwards. Of course, that would be blissful, too. Oh! if he could only claim her before all the world how glorious it would be—but for the present that was hopeless, and at all events her life with him would not be more retired than the one of monotony which she led at La Sarthe Chase, and would have his tenderest love to brighten it. He would take a tiny house for her somewhere—one of those very old-fashioned ones shut in with a garden still left in Chelsea, near the Embankment—and there he would spend every moment of his spare time, and try to make up to her for her isolation. Well arranged, the world need not know of this—Halcyone would never be exigeante—or if it did develop a suspicion, ministers before his day had been known to have had—chères amies.
But as this thought came he jumped from his chair. It was, when faced in a concrete fashion, hideously unpalatable as touching his pure, fair star.
"You are rather restless to-day, John," the Professor said, as his old pupil went hastily towards the open window and looked out.
"Yes," said John Derringham. "It is going to rain, and I must go to Bristol this afternoon. I have to see a man on business."
Cheiron's left penthouse went up into his forehead.
"Matters complicating?" was all he said.
"Yes, the very devil," responded John Derringham.
"Beginning to feel the noose already, poor lad?"
"Er—no, not exactly," and he turned round. "But I don't quite know what I ought to do about her—Mrs. Cricklander."