But if Edmund Plantagenet's legs were a trifle unsteady, his heart was all afire with wrath and remorse at this dramatic interlude. For the first time in so many years he began to think bitterly to himself of his wasted opportunities and ruined talents. Such as they were, he had really and truly wasted them; and though perhaps, after all, they were never much to boast of, time had been when Edmund Plantagenet thought highly indeed of them. Nay, in his heart of hearts the broken old dancing-master thought highly of them still, in spite of everything during all those long years. There were nights when he lay awake sobering, on his hard bed at home, and repeated lovingly to himself the 'Stanzas to Evelina' which he had contributed ages ago to the 'Book of Beauty,' or the 'Lines on the Death of Wordsworth' which he printed at the time in the _Yorkshire Magazine_, with a profound conviction that they contained, after all, some of the really most beautiful and least appreciated poetry in the English language. As a rule, Mr. Plantagenet was fairly contented with himself and his relics of character; it was society--harsh, unfeeling, stupid society--that he blamed most of all for his misfortunes and failures. Still, to every one of us there come now and then moments of genuine self-revelation, when the clouds of egotism and perverse misrepresentation, through which we usually behold our own personality in a glorified halo, fade away before the piercing light of truer introspective analysis, forced suddenly upon us by some disillusioning incident or accident of the moment; and then, for one brief flash, we have the misery and agony of really seeing ourselves as others see us. Such days may Heaven keep kindly away from all of us! Such a day Edmund Plantagenet had now drearily fallen upon. He wandered wildly down the dark bank toward Iflley lasher, his whole soul within him stirred and upheaved with volcanic energy by the shame and disgrace of that evening's degradation. The less often a man suffers from these bruts of self-humiliation, the more terrible is their outburst when they finally do arrive to him. Edmund Plantagenet, loathing and despising his present self, by contrast with that younger and idealized image which had perhaps never really existed at all, stumbled in darkness and despair along that narrow path, between the flooded river on one side and the fence that enclosed the damp water-meadows on the other, still more than half drunk, and utterly careless where he went or what on earth might happen to him.