Now from the moment that such thoughts as these entered Mary Smith’s head about a man’s appointment, that man was safe: poor George’s future was therefore ultimately secure. But there was no time to lose. He must get on to the front bench, and he must get there with a salary, and the salary must be sufficient, and the promotion must be rapid. She remembered that Dolly would be at the Petheringtons’ that evening, and she determined to be there too. She hoped and prayed that nothing would bring George, though since George was everywhere the chances were against her prayer being answered. For the moment she thought of warning him not to come, then, remembering certain indiscretions of his in the past, she thought it best to say nothing, but to trust to chance. CHAPTER IV Charles Repton, manifold as were his financial interests, knew nothing of Popocatapetls, and cared less. The manner in which his life was to be influenced by that very distant cataclysm was hidden from him; as (for that matter) it would be hidden from the reader also had not this book been most boldly published. Yet another thing the full import of which may escape the reader, is the fact that Sir Charles Repton was extremely tender just behind the ears; but for this the reader herself alone and not the author is to blame, for if the reader had any knowledge of Caryll’s Ganglia she would have guessed at twenty things. But no matter: Caryll’s Ganglia and their effect upon self-control very much interrupt the chain of those absorbing adventures which, if she will continue, the reader will presently peruse. Anyhow, those regions of the head which lie behind either ear were for some reason or other very tender, large, sensitive to pressure, and in a way abnormal in Sir Charles Repton. When, therefore, somewhere about the corner of Tottenham Court Road (on that March day on which we left him walking to his Board meeting), his hat blew off: when he had run after it: when in doing so he had ruffled his fine crop of white hair; and when, to have it all set right, he had gone into a second-rate barber’s, it may well be imagined that he gave the man who served him minute instructions that the head rest upon the back of the chair should be made comfortable--and so it was. And on to it Sir Charles Repton leant gingerly the head upon whose clear action depended the future fortunes of Van Diemens. The man in brushing his hair with an apparatus of singular power, turned the monologue on to the commonplaces of the moment, which included the bestiality of the Government and the abhorrent nature of the Italian people, of whom at that particular moment in 1915 the people of London stood in abject terror.