s asked to come at once. Jevons, for
Viola's present purposes, was ignored.

With his usual intelligence he saw my point. We made out that the message
suggested trouble with Viola's family, and he agreed heartily that he was
not precisely the person to deal with that.

Oh yes, he trusted me. He gave me his word of honour that he would stay
in Bruges until I either sent for him or came back to fetch him.

Before I left I had a straight talk with him.

I pointed out to him (what he said he knew as well as I did) that on the
most lenient view of his case he had compromised Miss Thesiger very
seriously. But, I said, he would have had to have compromised her more
seriously still before her people would consent to her marrying him. He
must see that, with what he had done, by stopping short of what he
might have done, he had made himself, if anything, more unacceptable
than he was to begin with. She might--she probably would in her present
mood--insist on marrying him without their consent. On the other hand,
she just mightn't. And it wasn't as if he could afford to marry her at
once, while her present mood was on.

He said, No. But in six months he could afford it. He gave himself six
months.

I said, Anything might happen in six months. Miss Thesiger's present mood
(which, I put it to him, was very much made up of old Flemish glamour)
might change. And if it did, it was just conceivable that she might marry
_me_. He was determined to marry Miss Thesiger if he got the chance. _I_
was determined to marry Miss Thesiger if _I_ got the chance. At the
present most of the chances, I owned, were in his favour. But there was
just the off-chance in mine.

And that off-chance, I told him plainly, I meant to make the most of. I
wouldn't be human if I didn't. I wasn't taking any unfair advantage of
him, considering the tremendous innings he had had in Flanders, with the
Flemish atmosphere to help him. If I could make any running in
Canterbury, with the Canterbury atmosphere to help _me_ (he owned very
handsomely that it would help me, that I'd be "in it" quite beautifully)
why, I'd make it.

Had he anything to say?

He looked at me very straight, with just the least perceptible twinkle,
and he said, "All right, old man, cut in, and take your chance. I'll risk
it."

I got to Canterbury in the early evening and went straight from my
Fifteenth Century hotel to the Thesigers' house in the Close. I spotted
it at once. It was all