Lucian escaped the fatuous father at last. He rushed out into the sunlight, almost choking with rage, grief, and disappointment. He flung the powder into the hedge-bottom, sat down on a stone-heap at the side of the road, and began to swear in Italian. He swore freely and fluently until he had exhausted that eloquent vocabulary which one may pick up in Naples and Venice and in the purlieus of Hatton Garden, and when he had finished he began it all over again and repeated it with as much fervour as one should display, if one is honest, in reciting the Rosary. This saved him from apoplexy, but the blood grew black within him and his soul was scratched. It had been no part of Lucian’s plans for the future that Sprats should come between him and his friend. He slept badly that night, and while he lay awake he said to himself that it was all over. It was a mere repetition of history--a woman always came between men. He had read a hundred instances--this was one more. Of course, the Sprats creature would oust him from his place--nothing would ever be as it had been. All was desolate, and he was alone. He read several pages of the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_ as soon as it was light, and dropped asleep with the firm conviction that life is a grey thing. All that day and the next Lucian kept away from the vicarage. The domestic deities wondered why he did not go as usual; he invented plausible excuses with facile ingenuity. He neglected his books and betrayed a suspicious interest in Mr. Pepperdine’s recent purchases of cattle; he was restless and at times excited, and Miss Keziah looked at his tongue and felt his forehead and made him swallow a dose of a certain home-made medicine by which she set great store. On the third day the suppressed excitement within him reached boiling-point. He went out into the fields mad to work it off, and by good or ill luck lighted upon an honest rustic who was hoeing turnips under a blazing midsummer sun. Lucian looked at the rustic with the eye of a mocking and mischievous devil. ‘Boggles,’ he said, with a Mephistophelian coaxing, ‘would you like to hear some Italian?’ Boggles ruminated. ‘Why, Master Lucian,’ he said, ‘I don’t know as I ever did hear that language--can’t say as I ever did, anyhow.’ ‘Listen, then,’ said Lucian. He treated Boggles to a string of expletives, delivered with native force and energy, making use of his eyes and teeth until the man began to feel frightened. ‘Lord sakes, Master Lucian!’ he said, ‘one ’ud think you was going to murder somebody--you look that fierce. It’s a queer sort o’ language that, sir--I never heard nowt like it. It flays a body.’ ‘It is the most delightful language in the world when you want to swear,’ said Lucian. ‘It....’ ‘Nonsense! It isn’t a patch on German. You wait till I get over the hedge and I’ll show you,’ cried a ringing and very authoritative voice. ‘I can reel off twice as much as that.’