These various considerations, however, had little to do with the immense inward anarchy that Mr. Prohack's tone had concealed as he musingly murmured: "Do I really?" The disturbance was due almost exclusively to a fierce imperial joy in the prospect of immediate wealth. The origin of the wealth scarcely affected him. The associations of the wealth scarcely affected him. He understood in a flash the deep wisdom of that old proverb (whose truth he had often hitherto denied) that money has no smell. Perhaps there might be forty good reasons against his accepting the inheritance, but they were all ridiculous. Was he to abandon his share of the money to Softly Bishop and the vampire-woman? Such a notion was idiotic. It was contrary to the robust and matter-of-fact commonsense which always marked his actions--if not his theories. No more should his wife be compelled to scheme out painfully the employment of her housekeeping allowance. Never again should there be a question about a new frock for his daughter. He was conscious, before anything else, of a triumphant protective and spoiling tenderness for his women. He would be absurd with his women. He would ruin their characters with kindness and with invitations to be capricious and exacting and expensive and futile. They nobly deserved it. He wanted to shout and to sing and to tell everybody that he would not in future stand any d----d nonsense from anybody. He would have his way. "Why!" thought he, pulling himself up. "I've developed all the peculiarities of a millionaire in about a minute and a half." And again, he cried to himself, in the vast and imperfectly explored jungle that every man calls his heart: "Ah! I could not have borne to give up either of my clubs! No! I was deceiving myself. I could not have done it! I could not have done it! Anything rather than that. I see it now.... By the way, I wonder what all the fellows will say when they know! And how shall I break it to them? Not to-day! Not to-day! To-morrow!" At the moment when Mr. Prohack ought to have been resuming his ill-remunerated financial toil for the nation at the Treasury, Bishop suggested in his offhand murmuring style that they might pay a visit to the City solicitor who was acting in England for him and the Angmering estate. Mr. Prohack opposingly suggested that national duty called him elsewhere. "Does that matter--now?" said Bishop, and his accents were charged with meaning.