the men about would meet and shake their heads over
it, putting two and two together, making out what it meant. Probably they
would advertise cautiously (which was what Dick himself, as a budding
lawyer, would recommend in the circumstances) for _her_, poor creature,
sure to be dead and buried long before that. They would consult together
whether it was necessary to inform poor Mrs. Cavendish until they had
something more definite to say. Dick, looking down the vale of years,
saw, or thought he saw, with a curious quiver of his heart between
pleasure and pity, Chatty in a widow's cap, shedding tears at the sound
of his name, absolutely obtuse and incapable of understanding how any
dishonour could have come to her by him. They would think her stupid,
Dick believed, with a tear stealing to the corner of his eye. Yes, she
would be blank with a holy stupidity, God bless her, idiotic, if you
like, my fine gentleman, in that--not capable of understanding dishonour.
It was with a sort of grim pleasure that he got up after this and
lighted a candle, which shone strangely yellow and smoky in the clear
September sunshine. "I'll balk them," he said to himself, with fierce
satisfaction, as if those respectable imaginary executors of his had
been ill-natured gossips bent on exposing him. And he burnt the papers
one by one at his candle, watching the last fibre of each fade away in
redness and then in blackness, disappearing into nothing.

And then he packed his portmanteau and went down to Highcombe. There
are some people who will think this inconceivable, but then these good
persons perhaps have never had a strong overpowering inclination to
fight against, never been pressed and even menaced by an urgent adviser,
never recognised that necessity of doing one thing which seems to throw
the troubled mind into the arms of the other. And then below all these
contentions Dick had a stubborn, strong determination to conduct this
matter his own way. He had decided in his mind that it was the best way.
If there had been any latent doubt on the subject before he consulted
his old friend, that had been dissipated by the interview and by all the
old gentleman's cogent reasoning on the other side. Dick felt that he
had taken the bit in his teeth and would be guided by no man. It _was_
the best way, there was no risk in it, no wrong in it--certainly no
wrong. He had not dealt even harshly with that wretched creature. He
knew that he had been kin