"Coming back, eh! My young friend Derinzy--member here, by-the-way; letters had better go to one of the other clubs in future; it is best to be on the safe side. Coming back, eh! And now what are--what parents call--his 'intentions,' I wonder? Scarcely so 'strictly honourable' as the middle-class father longs to hear professed by enamoured aristocrats. If he meant marriage, he would certainly have proposed before he left town, when, if all I learn is true, he was so wildly mad about the girl he would not have left her to---- And yet, perhaps, that is the very reason, though she said nothing, she has evidently been pleased by the attentions which I have shown her; and this perhaps has caused her to slack off in her correspondence with this young fellow, or to influence its warmth, or something of that kind, and this may have had the effect of bringing him to book. "If he were to declare off, how would that suit me? Impossible to say. In the fit of rage and disgust with him, she might say yes to anything I asked her; on the other hand, she might have a fit of remorse, and think that it was all from having listened to the blandishments of this serpent she lost a chance of enjoying a perpetual paradise with that bureaucratic young Adam. "There is the other fellow, too--the young man 'in her own station of life'--shopkeeper, mechanic, whatever he is. Clarisse seems to have some notion that he is coming to the fore, though I don't think there is any chance for him. The girl's tastes lie obviously in quite a different line, and I am by no means certain that his being in the race is a bad thing for me. However, it's plainly time that something must be done; and now, how to do it?"