"Really, it's rather too much to have to think out that young man's affairs as well as one's own. And the situation is so extraordinary!—Maxwell and I have to be in constant consultation. I went to see him in his room in the House of Lords the other night, and met a man coming out, who stopped, and stared as though he were shot. Luckily I knew him, and could say a word to him, or there would have been all sorts of cock-and-bull stories abroad."
"Well, and what are you and Maxwell doing?"
"Trying to get at the young woman. One can't buy her off, of course. Ancoats is his own master, and could outbid us. But Maxwell has found a brother—a decent sort of fellow—a country solicitor. And there is a Ritualist curate, a Father somebody,"—Fontenoy raised his shoulders,—"who seems to have an intermittent hold on the girl. When she has fits of virtue she goes to confess to him. Maxwell has got hold of him."
"And meanwhile Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim?"
"Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim, and behaving himself, as I hear from his poor mother." Fontenoy sighed. "But the boy was frightened, of course, when they went abroad. Now she is getting better, and one can't tell—"
"No, one can't tell," said George.
"I wish I knew what the thing really meant," said Fontenoy, presently, in a tone of perplexed reverie. "What do you think? Is it a passion—?"
"Or a pose?"
George pondered.
"H'm," he said at last—"more of a pose, I think, than a passion. Ancoats always seems to me the jeune premier in his own play. He sees his life in scenes, and plays them according to all the rules."