e. It's dreadful--If it gets about it spells ruin
for her."

"Ruin," said Widgery.

"No man would marry a girl like that," said Phipps.

"It must be hushed up," said Dangle.

"It always seems to me that life is made up of individuals, of
individual cases. We must weigh each person against his or her
circumstances. General rules don't apply--"

"I often feel the force of that," said Widgery. "Those are my rules. Of
course my books--"

"It's different, altogether different," said Dangle. "A novel deals with
typical cases."

"And life is not typical," said Widgery, with immense profundity.

Then suddenly, unintentionally, being himself most surprised and shocked
of any in the room, Phipps yawned. The failing was infectious, and the
gathering having, as you can easily understand, talked itself weary,
dispersed on trivial pretences. But not to sleep immediately. Directly
Dangle was alone he began, with infinite disgust, to scrutinise his
darkling eye, for he was a neat-minded little man in spite of his
energy. The whole business--so near a capture--was horribly vexatious.
Phipps sat on his bed for some time examining, with equal disgust, a
collar he would have thought incredible for Sunday twenty-four hours
before. Mrs. Milton fell a-musing on the mortality of even big, fat men
with dog-like eyes, and Widgery was unhappy because he had been so cross
to her at the station, and because so far he did not feel that he had
scored over Dangle. Also he was angry with Dangle. And all four of
them, being souls living very much upon the appearances of things, had a
painful, mental middle distance of Botley derisive and suspicious, and
a remoter background of London humorous, and Surbiton speculative. Were
they really, after all, behaving absurdly?

XXXII. MR. HOOPDRIVER, KNIGHT ERRANT

As Mr. Dangle bad witnessed, the fugitives had been left by him by
the side of the road about two miles from Botley. Before Mr. Dangle's
appearance, Mr. Hoopdriver had been learning with great interest that
mere roadside flowers had names,--star-flowers, wind-stars, St. John's
wort, willow herb, lords and ladies, bachelor's buttons,--most curious
names, some of them. "The flowers are all different in South Africa,
y'know," he was explaining with a happy fluke of his imagination to
account for his ignorance. Then suddenly, heralded by clattering sounds
and a gride of wheels, Dangle had flared and thundered across the
tranquillity of th