Feeling strong enough for nothing, he left her letter unanswered for a day, and received, on the next, eight pages of aggrieved reproaches for having forsaken her in the hour of her greatest need.
That was but the prelude to many meetings of as strange a kind. He never knew in what mood he should find her, nor in which she might wish to find him.
He believed her revulsions of propriety to be sincere, but felt she had no business with so many, especially since he offered her every assistance to avoid the need of them. He respected her for the first, pitied her for the second, endured the third in silence, and then began to hate them.
He did not expect a woman to know her own mind, but he thought her ignorance might be more agreeable.
So passed what was for Terence a very melancholy winter. He bore it with a resignation nerved by the near prospect of escape to a berth in Paris, which had been as good as promised him when it became vacant. Meanwhile Downing Street saw more of him than usual, and he took every opportunity of immersing himself still deeper in his work.
The post he had been expecting became available in March, and, too modest to urge his claim or to remind his patron, he was mortified to find one morning that it had been filled by another.
He accepted his ill-fortune silently, and only learnt a month later to whom he owed it.
He was enlightened then by accident, the peer, in whose gift the appointment practically lay, happening to express a regret that Terence had not seen his way to accept it.
"To accept it!" he replied, laughing. "It wasn't offered me."
"It wasn't offered you," said the other slowly, "because a certain friend of yours told me you had determined definitely, for the present, not to leave England."