On the evening of the same day Durant told his tale to Lady Curtis. She and her daughter had come to London on hearing the news of Arthur’s “entanglement,” as many an alarmed mother and sister have done before them. Sir John either could not, or would not join them. He had less faith than women have in the efficacy of personal remonstrances, and indeed he had no great faith in the delinquency to start with, and gave his son credit for “more sense,” if less virtue, than they believed him capable of. To hear that Arthur was on the eve of marriage had stunned Sir John. He had written with indignant vehemence, and he had commissioned his “man of business” to go and see the “young fool;” and he had forbidden his wife to go to her son as she desired. “Get him to come to you if you can,” he had said; but he was afraid for the results of a visit from his wife with the possibility of an introduction of the girl, and a melting of my lady’s heart over her son’s love. Sir John gave his wife credit for much more sentiment than she possessed; and as for Lucy, she of course was sentimental enough to be sympathetic at once without any preliminaries. “You had better leave him to the lawyers,” Sir John said, having a strong confidence in people who could make themselves disagreeable; but he consented that the ladies should go to town to be near the spot, if the other functionaries managed to “unearth” the culprit. Once away from that temptation, once delivered from the syren who had “entangled” him, no doubt Arthur would be safer with his mother and sister than anywhere else. And Lady Curtis had acquiesced, though with reluctance, in this prohibition. She had felt that to go and see him might bring her into painful collision with the other people about him, and at the best would expose Arthur to what a young man likes least, the shame of being interfered with, and worried by his family in full sight of the world. Sir John, however, had nothing to do with the mission of Durant; _he_ was the emissary of the ladies called by them to their aid in the emergency. No other messenger had seemed to them so suitable. His dearest friend, his _ami de l’enfance_, what more natural than that they should have recourse to his aid? And in these circumstances it may be supposed how hard it was for Durant to tell the story of his own defeat. He did it in the library in Berkeley Square in the waning afternoon, just before the evening fell. The room itself which seemed to him half as big as the whole town of Underhayes, was full of ghostly books, showing here and there in a streak of gilding, in a bit of white vellum, which caught the remains of the red October sunshine. The thinned trees waved slowly across the windows, and when a gust of wind came, a shower of falling leaves swept over the firmament outside. Lady Curtis sat between the fire and the nearest window, listening intently with her eyes fixed on his face. Lucy was in one of the window-seats, almost behind their visitor.