Chapter 4

On the evening that succeeded this apparently pointless encounter he
had an interview more conclusive with Mrs. Bundy, for whose shrewd
and philosophic view of life he had several times expressed, even to
the good woman herself, a considerable relish. The situation at
Jersey Villas (Mrs. Ryves had suddenly flown off to Dover) was such
as to create in him a desire for moral support, and there was a kind
of domestic determination in Mrs. Bundy which seemed, in general, to
advertise it. He had asked for her on coming in, but had been told
she was absent for the hour; upon which he had addressed himself
mechanically to the task of doing up his dishonoured manuscript--the
ingenious fiction about which Mr. Locket had been so stupid--for
further adventures and not improbable defeats. He passed a restless,
ineffective afternoon, asking himself if his genius were a horrid
delusion, looking out of his window for something that didn't happen,
something that seemed now to be the advent of a persuasive Mr. Locket
and now the return, from an absence more disappointing even than Mrs.
Bundy's, of his interesting neighbour of the parlours. He was so
nervous and so depressed that he was unable even to fix his mind on
the composition of the note with which, on its next peregrination, it
was necessary that his manuscript should be accompanied. He was too
nervous to eat, and he forgot even to dine; he forgot to light his
candles, he let his fire go out, and it was in the melancholy chill
of the late dusk that Mrs. Bundy, arriving at last with his lamp,
found him extended moodily upon his sofa. She had been informed that
he wished to speak to her, and as she placed on the malodorous
luminary an oily shade of green pasteboard she expressed the friendly
hope that there was nothing wrong with his 'ealth.

The young man rose from his couch, pulling himself together
sufficiently to reply that his health was well enough but that his
spirits were down in his hoots. He had a strong disposition to
"draw" his landlady on the subject of Mrs. Ryves, as well as a vivid
conviction that she constituted a theme as to which Mrs. Bundy would
require little pressure to tell him even more than she knew. At the
same time he hated to appear to pry into the secrets of his absent
friend; to discuss her with their bustling hostess resembled too much
for his taste a gossip with a tattling servant about an unconscious
employer. He left out of account however Mrs. Bundy's knowledge of
the human heart, for it was this fine principle that broke down the
barriers after he had reflected reassuringly that it was not meddling
with Mrs. Ryves's affairs to try and find out if she struck such an
observer as happy. Crudely, abruptly, even a little