A VALIANT IGNORANCE A VALIANT IGNORANCE A Novel BY MARY ANGELA DICKENS AUTHOR OF “CROSS CURRENTS,” “A MERE CYPHER,” ETC. “Thy gold is brass!” PRINCE HOHENSTIEL SCHWANGAU _IN THREE VOLUMES_ VOL. II. London MACMILLAN & CO. AND NEW YORK 1894 A VALIANT IGNORANCE CHAPTER I The oppressive autumn weather continued for the next week and more, but the atmosphere in the house at Chelsea gradually cleared; at least, the electrical disturbances which had, as a matter of fact, culminated in Julian’s departure for the club, subsided. As the days went on, Julian gradually recovered his spirits. His temper, which had given way so suddenly and completely under the strain put upon it by the unprecedented thwarting to which he had been subjected, recovered its careless easiness. The injured expression of moodiness disappeared wholly from his face, and his manner resumed its buoyancy. Nevertheless, the life of the present autumn was by no means the life of the past spring. Partly, of course, the different framework was responsible; life, especially at this particular moment, when winter society was as yet hardly formed, consisted by no means wholly of a social existence. It was, in fact, distinctly “slack” and heavy on social lines as compared with the high pressure of the season; and the introduction into the routine of life of a certain number of hours of regular work on Julian’s part--the first practical acknowledgement in the house in Queen Anne Street, that work had anything to do with life--could not fail to alter the tone to some extent. But there was a subtle change in Julian himself, which was hardly to be accounted for on such broad lines. He had recovered his normal mental temperature, indeed, but the interval of disturbance seemed to have had some indefinable effect upon him. He had recovered himself--but it was himself with a difference. It was almost impossible to narrow the difference into words. To say that he was colder to his mother, or that he stood deliberately aloof from her, would not have been true. But there was a touch of independence about his whole personality which was new to it; a certain suggestion of a separate life and separate interests, such as must inevitably come to a man sooner or later, which seemed to tinge his intercourse with her--superficially the same as it remained--with something of carelessness, and even a hint of unconscious patronage.