'How long, then, before you act?' he inquired abruptly.

'When my new home is found, I am ready to go there.'

'You will deal honestly with me? You will tell every one, and give up
everything not strictly yours?'

'I have done with lies,' said Nancy.

'Thank heaven, so have I!'

Part VI: A Virtue of Necessity

CHAPTER 1

Upon the final tempest in De Crespigny Park there followed, for Arthur
Peachey, a calmer and happier season than he had ever known. To have
acted with stern resolve is always a satisfaction, especially to the man
conscious of weak good-nature, and condemned for the most part to yield.
In his cheap lodging at Clapham, Peachey awoke each morning with a
vague sense of joy, which became delight as soon as he had collected his
senses. He was a free man. No snarl greeted him as he turned his head
upon the pillow; he could lie and meditate, could rise quietly when the
moment sounded, could go downstairs to a leisurely meal, cheered perhaps
by a letter reporting that all was well with his dear little son.
Simple, elementary pleasures, but how he savoured them after his years
of sordid bondage!

It was the blessedness of divorce, without squalid publicity. It was the
vast relief of widowerhood, without dreary memories of death and burial.

In releasing himself from such companionship, the man felt as though he
had washed and become clean.

Innocent of scientific speculation, he had the misfortune about this
time to read in paper or magazine something on the subject of heredity,
the idle verbiage of some half-informed scribbler. It set him anxiously
thinking whether his son would develop the vices of the mother's mind,
and from that day he read all the printed chatter regarding natural
inheritance that he could lay his hands on. The benefit he derived from
this course of study was neither more nor less than might have been
expected; it supplied him with a new trouble, which sometimes kept
him wakeful. He could only resolve that his boy should have the best
education procurable for money, if he starved himself in providing it.

He had begun to live with the utmost economy, and for a twofold reason:
the business of Messrs Ducker, Blunt & Co. threatened a decline, and,
this apart, he desired to get out of it, to obtain an interest in some
more honourable concern. For a long time it had been known to him that
the disinfectants manufactured by his firm were far from trustworthy,
and of lat