fished out a dole,
though he was vexed at the injury to the supper.

XLVI

Peter meanwhile rolled away through the summer night to Saint John's
Wood. He had put the pressure of strong words on his young friend,
entreating her to drive home immediately, return there without any one,
without even her mother. He wished to see her alone and for a purpose he
would fully and satisfactorily explain--couldn't she trust him? He
besought her to remember his own situation and throw over her supper,
throw over everything. He would wait for her with unspeakable impatience
in Balaklava Place.

He did so, when he got there, but it had taken half an hour.
Interminable seemed his lonely vigil in Miss Lumley's drawing-room,
where the character of the original proprietress came out to him more
than ever before in a kind of afterglow of old sociabilities, a vulgar,
ghostly reference. The numerous candles had been lighted for him, and
Mrs. Rooth's familiar fictions lay about; but his nerves forbade him the
solace of a chair and a book. He walked up and down, thinking and
listening, and as the long window, the balmy air permitting, stood open
to the garden, he passed several times in and out. A carriage appeared
to stop at the gate--then there was nothing; he heard the rare rattle of
wheels and the far-off hum of London. His impatience was overwrought,
and though he knew this it persisted; it would have been no easy matter
for Miriam to break away from the flock of her felicitators. Still less
simple was it doubtless for her to leave poor Dashwood with his supper
on his hands. Perhaps she would bring Dashwood with her, bring him to
time her; she was capable of playing him--that is, of playing Her
Majesty's new representative to the small far-off State, or even of
playing them both--that trick. Perhaps the little wretch in
buttons--Peter remembered now the neglected shilling--only pretending to
go round with his card, had come back with an invented answer. But how
could he know, since presumably he couldn't read Italian, that his
answer would fit the message? Peter was sorry now that he himself had
not gone round, not snatched Miriam bodily away, made sure of her and of
what he wanted of her.

When forty minutes had elapsed he regarded it as proved that she
wouldn't come, and, asking himself what he should do, determined to
drive off again and seize her at her comrade's feast. Then he remembered
how Nick had mentioned that this e