Pierre may not flee. Distracted by his son's emotional outlawry and fearful infatuation, Pierre Lanier has no desire to forsake the crazed Paul. He will risk ignominious arrest and gallows' accounting rather than leave this insane youth to his fate.
At times is felt a certain sense of dogged resignation. This cautious, crafty, resourceful schemer becomes strangely quiescent. With this stoical temper come moods of questioning reflection. He mutters:
"How fearfully void have been my plans and dubious courses! To what purpose was a trusting partner duped by hypocritical sympathy, lured to bankrupt's expedients and goaded to self-murder? Wherein consisted worth of embezzled funds? For whose advantage was the guileless ward defrauded out of princely inheritance? That villainous sham suit and those Thames murders, of what avail were such crimes? To what end was that subservient tool suborned, and afterward, with trusting wife, murderously assaulted in deserted Calcutta suburb?
"That these should be followed by such terribly harassing flights, culminating in purposeless return to London, Paul's dreadful disorder and present helpless mazes seems direct sentence execution upon Pierre Lanier. Are not all these fateful perversities cumulative wrath upon my own guilty head?
"Such remorseless avenging!"
It seems to Pierre Lanier that Nemesis has found the most susceptible joint in his conscious being, and with relentless persistence is testing its capacity for torture.
Attempts at stoical endurance are but briefly availing. The dreadful presence of Paul's craze will not avaunt. This haunting incarnation of Lanier guilt and accounting shifts its boding menace but to appear more real at each altered view.
Helpless to provide against any of the dreaded contingents hedging them about, Pierre's whole care is absorbed in avoiding Paul's capricious displeasure. He studies his son's crazed peculiarities. Childhood memories seem to exert most potent control over Paul's unfilial tendencies. However, such influences are uncertain, partaking of childish perverseness.
Since that time when Pierre learned his son's horrible Thames infatuation, he had not spied upon Paul's night vigils. Months have dragged their slow tortures.
At length there is a variation in daily worries at the Lanier room. Paul is missing. In fearful suspense the startled father waits all the first day and night. Doubtless Paul has made some bad break. Perhaps this insane boy has committed an assault on some real or imaginary foe. Possibly he is in need or in custody!