Chapter 7

"I've had time to look a little further into what we're prepared to
do, and I find the case is one in which I should consider the
advisability of going to an extreme length," said Mr. Locket. Jersey
Villas the next morning had had the privilege of again receiving the
editor of the Promiscuous, and he sat once more at the davenport,
where the bone of contention, in the shape of a large, loose heap of
papers that showed how much they had been handled, was placed well in
view. "We shall see our way to offering you three hundred, but we
shouldn't, I must positively assure you, see it a single step
further."

Peter Baron, in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his hands in his
pockets, crept softly about the room, repeating, below his breath and
with inflections that for his own sake he endeavoured to make
humorous: "Three hundred--three hundred." His state of mind was far
from hilarious, for he felt poor and sore and disappointed; but he
wanted to prove to himself that he was gallant--was made, in general
and in particular, of undiscourageable stuff. The first thing he had
been aware of on stepping into his front room was that a four-wheeled
cab, with Mrs. Ryves's luggage upon it, stood at the door of No. 3.
Permitting himself, behind his curtain, a pardonable peep, he saw the
mistress of his thoughts come out of the house, attended by Mrs.
Bundy, and take her place in the modest vehicle. After this his eyes
rested for a long time on the sprigged cotton back of the landlady,
who kept bobbing at the window of the cab an endlessly moralising old
head. Mrs. Ryves had really taken flight--he had made Jersey Villas
impossible for her--but Mrs. Bundy, with a magnanimity unprecedented
in the profession, seemed to express a belief in the purity of her
motives. Baron felt that his own separation had been, for the
present at least, effected; every instinct of delicacy prompted him
to stand back.

Mr. Locket talked a long time, and Peter Baron listened and waited.
He reflected that his willingness to listen would probably excite
hopes in his visitor--hopes which he himself was ready to contemplate
without a scruple. He felt no pity for Mr. Locket and had no
consideration for his suspense or for his possible illusions; he only
felt sick and forsaken and in want of comfort and of money. Yet it
was a kind of outrage to his dignity to have the knife held to his
throat, and he was irritated above all by the ground on which Mr.
Locket put the question--the ground of a service rendered to
historical truth. It might be--he wasn't clear; it might be--the
question was deep, too deep, probably, for his wisdom; at any rate he
had to control himself not to interrupt angrily such dry,