Of Mr Barnett he saw and heard even less, on account of that deplorable imbroglio with which my reader is already acquainted. The interval was short. It was but a fortnight after the scene in the drawing-room, that the doctor gave Mr Burden leave to resume his business activities; but the continued loneliness and silence had borne upon him very heavily. I myself saw him in those days, and I myself was deceived by his reaction towards health. I did not comprehend, nor did anyone comprehend, how deep was the wound which even so short an illness and one of so indeterminate a nature could inflict upon such a character as Mr Burden’s, a character already shaken by doubt and continual nameless perplexities. We could all see that he had been thrust suddenly beyond the boundary of old age, but we could not see the further thing: I mean, that he was very near to the last fall of all; that any sudden blow might be his end. That blow was delivered, of course, by the blundering hand of the unpardonable Abbott. * * * * * It will readily be perceived that, with a man of Mr Abbott’s temper, the great forces of modern England would breed, not only a reactionary hatred, but a mania for suspicion. The man was for ever putting two and two together. He was perpetually seeing conspiracies where no conspiracy existed, nay where no conspiracy could, in the nature of things, exist. He would smell out the secret influences of what he called “cosmopolitan finance,” in the actions of the dullest and most orderly of civil servants. He had dropped one newspaper after another, proceeding on a scale, as it were, from the fairly sane to the hopelessly fanatical. At last he had come to reading none, with the exception of a weekly sheet which not only floundered into every mare’s nest of politics, but was largely supported by subscriptions from Mr Abbott himself. With such a temper attaching to the ordinary affairs of the State; with a view of the occupation of Egypt (for example) that it was provoked by a group of bankers and scripholders; with the confirmed opinion that the problems of the Irish Land were principally due to the greed of English moneylenders—with every illusion a belated radical can nourish, it is not wonderful that Mr Abbott, the moment difficulties of any sort threatened himself, should have positively raved. A man of quieter temper would have known that Cosmo’s strong and virile attitude during the moment of their short interview was a piece of very legitimate _finesse_. A man who could see modern commerce as it is, would have admired the young man for the attempt, but would have known how little strength lay behind it.