spectable wedding, amidst universal sympathy and
admiration and the presence of all the very best people. In these
anticipations he did rather remarkably overlook the absence of any sign
of participation on the part of Lady Harman in his own impassioned
personal feelings, and he overlooked still more remarkably as possible
objections to his line of conduct, Millicent, Florence, Annette and
Baby. These omissions no doubt simplified but also greatly falsified his
outlook.

This proposal that all the best people shall applaud the higher
rightness that was to be revealed in his projected elopement, is in the
very essence of the romantic attitude. All other people are still to
remain under the law. There is to be nothing revolutionary. But with
exceptional persons under exceptional conditions----

Mr. Brumley stated his case over and over again to his utmost
satisfaction, and always at great moral altitudes and with a kind of
transcendent orthodoxy. The more difficult any aspect of the affair
appeared from the orthodox standpoint the more valiantly Mr. Brumley
soared; if it came to his living with Lady Harman for a time before they
could be properly married amidst picturesque foreign scenery in a little
_casa_ by the side of a stream, then the water in that stream was to be
quite the purest water conceivable and the scenery and associations as
morally faultless as a view that had passed the exacting requirements of
Mr. John Ruskin. And Mr. Brumley was very clear in his mind that what he
proposed to do was entirely different in quality even if it was similar
in form from anything that anyone else had ever done who had ever before
made a scandal or appeared in the divorce court. This is always the way
in such cases--always. The scandal was to be a noble scandal, a proud
scandal, one of those instances of heroical love that turn aside
misdemeanours--admittedly misdemeanours--into edifying marvels.

This was the state of mind to which Mr. Brumley had attained when he
made his ineffectual raid upon Black Strand, and you will remark about
it, if you are interested in the changes in people's ideas that are
going on to-day, that although he was prepared to make the most
extensive glosses in this particular instance upon the commonly accepted
rules of what is right and proper, he was not for a moment prepared to
accord the terrible gift of an independent responsibility to Lady
Harman. In that direction lay regions that Mr. Brumley