en wrote a
letter saying that in all probability he should pay a visit to
Twybridge before long. But the impulse was only of an hour's duration,
for he remembered that to talk with his mother would necessitate all
manner of new falsehoods, a thickening of the atmosphere of lies which
already oppressed him. No; if he quitted Exeter, it must be on a longer
journey. He must resume his purpose of seeking some distant country,
where new conditions of life would allow him to try his fortune at
least as an honest adventurer. In many parts of colonial England his
technical knowledge would have a value, and were there not women to be
won beneath other skies--women perhaps of subtler charm than the old
hidebound civilisation produced? Reminiscences of scenes and figures in
novels he had read nourished the illusion. He pictured some thriving
little town at the ends of the earth, where a young Englishman of good
manners and unusual culture would easily be admitted to the intimacy of
the richest families; he saw the ideal colonist (a man of good birth,
but a sower of wild oats in his youth) with two or three daughters
about him--beautiful girls, wondrously self-instructed--living amid
romantic dreams of the old world, and of the lover who would some day
carry them off (with a substantial share of papa's wealth) to Europe
and the scenes of their imagination.

The mind has marvellous methods of self-defence against creeping
lethargy of despair. At the point to which he had been reduced by
several days of blank despondency, Peak was able to find genuine
encouragement in visions such as this. He indulged his fancy until the
vital force began to stir once more within him, and then, with one
angry sweep, all his theological books and manuscripts were flung out
of sight. Away with this detestable mummery! Now let Bruno Chilvers
pour his eloquence from the pulpit of St. Margaret's, and rear to what
heights he could the edifice of his social glory; men of that stamp
were alone fitted to thrive in England. Was not _he_ almost certainly a
hypocrite, masking his brains (for brains he had) under a show of
broadest Anglicanism? But his career was throughout consistent. He trod
in the footsteps of his father, and with inherited aptitude moulded
antique traditions into harmony with the taste of the times. Compared
with such a man, Peak felt himself a bungler. The wonder was that his
clumsy lying had escaped detection.

Another day, and he had don