"The Professor must hear that. He insists on the fly, and the inn, and the wet boots, and the warming mixture, and the testimony of the landlady and the railway porter."
"I say, what more likely?"
"Than that he should insist?"
"If he is under the hallucination!"
"He may convince others."
"I have only to repeat. . ."
"'What more likely?' It's extremely philosophical. Coincident with a pursuit of the psychological affinities."
"Professor Crooklyn will hardly descend, I suppose, from his classical altitudes to lay his hallucinations before Dr. Middleton?"
"Sir Willoughby, you are the pink of chivalry!"
By harping on Laetitia, he had emboldened Mrs. Mountstuart to lift the curtain upon Clara. It was offensive to him, but the injury done to his pride had to be endured for the sake of his general plan of self-protection.