The arrangement he proposed was followed, as far at least as dropping him at his own house was concerned; but Chandos then returned to the hotel, and remained for nearly half-an-hour in sad thought. He had scarcely the heart to fly; but after a while, recalling the unpleasant image of long imprisonment before trial, he made up his mind to his course, and quitted London by one of the few stage coaches remaining. About ten days were spent in retirement at one of the small villages which are found scattered over the country within about twenty miles of London, and then he made his way back towards Winslow Abbey. He had heard no news of his antagonist's fate after he had left him with his friend and the surgeon on Wimbledon Common. In a country paper, indeed, he had seen, copied from a London paper, an account of the duel, in which the facts were of course misstated, without being altogether false. If newspapers would content themselves with telling the plain truth or the plain lie about anything, they would be beneficial or harmless; but it is the mixture of both which often renders them dangerous and detrimental, ay, sometimes even after nineteen years. From the journal which fell into his hands, all he gathered was that Lord Overton had been carried to his own house, supposed to be in a dying state, while the peer's conduct towards himself was grossly exaggerated by a democratic paper, for the purpose of crying down the aristocracy. He was grieved, anxious, remorseful; for he could not exculpate himself from all blame. He knew that Lord Overton had just cause to think that he was assuming a character which did not belong to him; and all the motives which had actuated before and during the duel seemed to vanish into thin air when he came calmly and without passion to examine his own conduct. In vain he asked himself if he could stand and be insulted without resentment in the presence of persons nearly strangers to him. In vain he thought that no law required him to remain passive and be shot at by a man who declared his determination of not quitting the ground till one fell. In vain he argued, that having put his honour into the hands of a friend, he was bound to abide by whatever determination that friend came to. He felt that he might have done better, and that by not doing so he had endangered, if not taken, the life of a fellow-creature. It was with a heavy heart then that, after having quitted the railroad and the cross coach, and left his baggage to be sent to the little public-house at Northferry, he walked on in the garments of an inferior station, which he had resumed, towards the ancient seat of his family, wishing to see his half-brother, Lockwood, and obtain further information upon many points before he proceeded to Mr. Tracy's.