over Homer just now. It was nerves, or luck, or pure accident,
the sort of thing that might have happened to anybody.) Thank Heaven,
his tongue was almost virgin to the aitch in Harden.

Harden--Lucia Harden. He knew her name and how to pronounce it; for he
had seen it written in the fly-leaf of a book, and heard it spoken by
the footman who called her Miss Loocher. This he took to be a
corruption of the Italian form.

Here he again tried to evoke a vivid image of Poppy; but without
success. And then he remembered that he had still to think it out.

First of all, then, he would eliminate sentiment. Sentiment apart, he
was by no means sure that he would do well to act on the impulse of
the morning and decamp. After all, what _was_ he sure of? Was he sure
that Sir Frederick Harden's affairs, including his library, were
involved beyond redemption? Put it that there was an off-chance of Sir
Frederick's financial recovery.

From the bare, uninteresting, financial point of view that event would
entail some regrettable consequences for himself. He had been
extremely rash. He had undertaken to accomplish three weeks' expert
work to the value of fifty pounds for which he had charged fifteen, an
estimate that at Rickman's would have been considered ridiculous for a
man's bare time. He had not so much as mentioned his fare; he had
refused board and lodging; and on the most sanguine computation his
fees would only cover his expenses by about five pounds. The
difference between fifteen pounds and fifty would have to be refunded
out of his own private pocket. When it came to settling accounts with
Rickman's his position would be, to say the least of it, embarrassing.
It was difficult to unravel the mental process that had led him into
it; but it was not the first time that these luxurious subtleties of
conscience had caused him to run short of ready money. It was only
another of those innumerable occasions when he and his father failed
to see face to face, and when he had had to pay for the pleasure of
supporting a fantastic personal view. Only the view in this case was
so hideously complicated and--and exaggerated. And this time in order
to clear himself he would be compelled to borrow again from Dicky
Pilkington. There was no other way. No sooner did Sir Frederick's head
appear rising above water than he saw his own hopelessly submerged.

Nevertheless it was this prospect that he found himself contemplating
with all the ardour