dissertations of a hostile and devastating nature upon the
lady of the Dower House.

He tried to imagine he hadn't heard all that he had heard, but Mrs.
Harrowdean had a nimble pen and nimbler afterthoughts, and once her mind
had got to work upon the topic she developed her offensive in
half-a-dozen brilliant letters.... On the other hand she professed a
steadily increasing passion for Mr. Britling. And to profess
passion for Mr. Britling was to put him under a sense of profound
obligation--because indeed he was a modest man. He found himself in an
emotional quandary.

You see, if Mrs. Harrowdean had left Mrs. Britling alone everything
would have been quite tolerable. He considered Mrs. Harrowdean a
charming human being, and altogether better than he deserved. Ever so
much better. She was all initiative and response and that sort of thing.
And she was so discreet. She had her own reputation to think about, and
one or two of her predecessors--God rest the ashes of those fires!--had
not been so discreet. Yet one could not have this sort of thing going on
behind Edith's back. All sorts of things one might have going on behind
Edith's back, but not this writing and saying of perfectly beastly
things about Edith. Nothing could alter the fact that Edith was his
honour....

Section 5

Throughout the week-end Mr. Britling had kept this trouble well battened
down. He had written to Mrs. Harrowdean a brief ambiguous note saying,
"I am thinking over all that you have said," and after that he had
scarcely thought about her at all. Or at least he had always contrived
to be much more vividly thinking about something else. But now in these
night silences the suppressed trouble burst hatches and rose about him.

What a mess he had made of the whole scheme of his emotional life! There
had been a time when he had started out as gaily with his passions and
his honour as he had started out with Gladys to go to Market Saffron.
He had as little taste for complications as he had for ditches. And now
his passions and his honour were in a worse case even than poor muddy
smashed up Gladys as the cart-horses towed her off, for she at any rate
might be repaired. But he--he was a terribly patched fabric of
explanations now. Not indeed that he had ever stooped to explanations.
But there he was! Far away, like a star seen down the length of a
tunnel, was that first sad story of a love as clean as starlight. It had
been all over by eight-and-