reasons, that she had even hovered and watched, assured herself a little
of his habits (which she managed to speak of as if, on their present
ampler development, they were much to be deferred to), detained them
enough to make vivid how, listen as stiffly or as serenely as he might,
she sat there in fear, just as she had so stood there at first, and that
her fear had really to do with her calculation of some sort of chance
with him. What chance could it possibly be? Whatever it might have
done, on this prodigious showing, with Kate Cookham, it made the present
witness to the state of his fortunes simply exquisite: he ground his
teeth secretly together as he saw he should have to take _that_. For
what did it mean but that she would have liked to pity him if she could
have done it with safety? Ah, however, he must give her no measure of
safety!

By the time he had remarked, with that idea, that she probably saw few
changes about them there that weren't for the worse--the place was going
down, down and down, so fast that goodness knew where it would stop--and
had also mentioned that in spite of this he himself remained faithful,
with all its faults loving it still; by the time he had, after that
fashion, superficially indulged her, adding a few further light and
just sufficiently dry reflections on local matters, the disappearance of
landmarks and important persons, the frequency of gales, the low policy
of the town-council in playing down to cheap excursionists: by the time
he had so acquitted himself, and she had observed, of her own motion,
that she was staying at the Royal, which he knew for the time-honoured,
the conservative and exclusive hotel, he had made out for himself
one thing at least, the amazing fact that he had been landed by his
troubles, at the end of time, in a "social relation," of all things
in the world, and how of that luxury he was now having unprecedented
experience. He had but once in his life had his nose in the Royal, on
the occasion of his himself delivering a parcel during some hiatus in
his succession of impossible small boys and meeting in the hall the
lady who had bought of him, in the morning, a set of Crabbe, largely, he
flattered himself, under the artful persuasion of his acute remarks
on that author, gracefully associated by him, in this colloquy, he
remembered, with a glance at Charles Lamb as well, and who went off in
a day or two without settling, though he received her cheque from L