e law released her.

One may doubt whether this extensive change from a humorous conservatism
to a primitive and dangerous romanticism is to be ascribed entirely to
the personal charm, great as it no doubt was, of Lady Harman; rather did
her tall soft dark presence come to release a long accumulating store of
discontent and unrest beneath the polished surfaces of Mr. Brumley's
mind. Things had been stirring in him for some time; the latter Euphemia
books had lacked much of the freshness of their precursors and he had
found it increasingly hard, he knew not why, to keep up the lightness,
the geniality, the friendly badinage of successful and accepted things,
the sunny disregard of the grim and unamiable aspects of existence,
that were the essential merits of that Optimistic Period of our
literature in which Mr. Brumley had begun his career. With every
justification in the world Mr. Brumley had set out to be an optimist,
even in the _Granta_ his work had been distinguished by its gay yet
steadfast superficiality, and his early success, his rapid popularity,
had done much to turn this early disposition into a professional
attitude. He had determined that for all his life he would write for
comfortable untroubled people in the character of a light-spirited,
comfortable, untroubled person, and that each year should have its book
of connubial humour, its travel in picturesque places, its fun and its
sunshine, like roses budding in succession on a stem. He did his utmost
to conceal from himself the melancholy realization that the third and
the fourth roses were far less wonderful than the first and the second,
and that by continuing the descending series a rose might be attained at
last that was almost unattractive, but he was already beginning to
suspect that he was getting less animated and a little irritable when
Euphemia very gently and gracefully but very firmly and rather
enigmatically died, and after an interval of tender and tenderly
expressed regrets he found himself, in spite of the most strenuous
efforts to keep bright and kindly and optimistic in the best style, dull
and getting duller--he could disguise the thing no longer. And he
weighed more. Six--eight--eleven pounds more. He took a flat in London,
dined and lunched out lightly but frequently, sought the sympathetic
friendship of several charming ladies, and involved himself deeply in
the affairs of the Academic Committee. Indeed he made a quite valiant
struggl