to have been performed there: at the same time, he could
hear Lady Charlotte's voice repeating with her varied intonation Mrs.
Pagnell's impressive utterances; and he could imagine how the somewhat
silly duenna aunt, so penetrable in her transparent artifices, struck
emphasis on the incredulity of people inclined to judge of the reported
ceremony by Lord Ormont's behaviour to his captive.

How explain that strange matter? But can there be a gain in trying to
sound it? Weyburn shuffled it away. Before the fit of passion seized him,
he could turn his eager mind from anything which had not a perceptible
point of gain, either for bodily strength or mental acquisition, or for
money, too, now that the school was growing palpable as an infant in arms
and agape for the breast. Thought of gain, and the bent to pursue it, is
the shield of Athene over young men in the press of the seductions. He
had to confess his having lost some bits of himself by reason of his
meditations latterly; and that loss, if we let it continue a space, will
show in cramp at the wrist, logs on the legs, a wheezy wind, for any
fellow vowed to physical trials of strength and skill. It will show
likewise in the brain beating broken wings--inability to shoot a thought
up out of the body for half a minute. And, good Lord! how quickly the
tight-strong fellow crumbles, when once the fragmentary disintegration
has begun! Weyburn cried out on a heart that bounded off at prodigal
gallops, and had to be nipped with reminders of the place of good leader
he was for taking among the young. Hang superexcellence! but we know
those moanings over the troubles of a married woman; we know their
sources, know their goal, or else we are the fiction-puppet or the
Bedlamite; and she is a married woman, married at the British Embassy,
Madrid, if you please! after a few weeks' acquaintance with her husband,
who doubtless wrote his name intelligibly in the registrar's book, but
does not prove himself much the hero when he drives a pen, even for so
little as the signing of his name! He signed his name, apparently not
more than partly pledging himself to the bond. Lord Ormont's
autobiographical scraps combined with Lady Charlotte's hints and Mrs.
Pagnell's communications, to provoke the secretary's literary contempt of
his behaviour to his wife. However, the former might be mended, and he
resumed the task.

It had the restorative effect of touching him to see his old hero in
action