change even in himself which
he did not understand, afraid to have people look at him and divine him,
knowing more of him perhaps than he himself knew, could make up his mind
to move. He might have remained there till the court broke up but for
the movement of some one beside him, who gathered up his hat and
umbrella, and with some commotion pushed his way between the rows
of seats. Philip followed, thankful of the opportunity, and, as it
happened, the sensation of the day being over, many others followed too,
and thus he got out into the curious, wondering daylight, which seemed
to look him in the face, as if this Philip had never been seen by it
before. That was the impression given him--that when he first came out
the atmosphere quivered round him with a strange novelty, as if he were
some other being, some one without a name, new to the world, new to
himself. He did not seem sure that he would know his way home, and yet
he did not call a passing hansom, as he would have done yesterday, with
a schoolboy's pleasure in assuming a man's careless, easy ways. It is a
long way from the Law Courts to Ebury Street, but it seemed a kind of
satisfaction to be in motion, to walk on along the crowded streets. And,
as a matter of fact, Philip did lose his way, and got himself entangled
in a web of narrow streets and monotonous little openings, all so like
each other that it took him a long time to extricate himself and find
again the thread of a locality known to him. He did not know what he was
to do when he got in. Should he find her there, in the little dingy
drawing-room as usual, with the tea on the table? Would she receive him
with her usual smile, and ask where he had been and what he had seen,
and if the Musgraves had enjoyed it, exactly as if nothing had happened?
Even this wonder was faint in Philip's mind, for the chief wonder to him
was himself, and to find out how he had changed since the morning--what
he was now, who he was? what were the relations to him of other people,
of that other Philip Compton who had been seated in the court with the
opera-glass, who had arrived at Windyhill to visit Elinor Dennistoun on
the 6th of September, 1863, twenty years ago? Who was that man? and what
was he, himself Philip Compton, of Lakeside, named Pippo, whom his
mother had never once in all his life called by his real name?

To his great wonder, and yet almost relief, Philip found that his mother
had not yet returned when he got