her. British Embassy, Madrid! Weyburn
believed the ceremony 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 rest