"Now I'm going to tell you a very singular thing. I made my peace with the old rector, partly by letter, partly by Edie's intervention, and at Christmas-time I was to have her if she was still of her old mind; so at Christmas-time down I came from town with the engagement ring in my pocket. I knew that the girl would keep true to me through thick and thin, though I did hope that she had not heard of a certain matter which had got my name into the papers that autumn. Never mind what it was. My father had written very violently on the subject, but I had not heard a word from hers. So I hoped for the best. I was not as yet a fully reformed character, but I was about to become one. The night before I left town I never went to bed at all. It was my last orgy; but I was sober enough in the early morning to go to Covent Garden in my dress clothes, and to buy flowers to take down to Edie with the ring. I chose roses, because they were the most expensive at that time of year; and red ones, because the girl was naturally so pale. Then I had a sleep in my chambers all the morning, and went down by an afternoon train. "It was dark when I landed at the market-town where the dog-cart used to meet one. I hadn't ordered it this time, because I wasn't going straight home. I found it freezing down there, and I thought I would walk out to the rectory through the crisp night air, so as to arrive there fresh, for by now I felt the effects of the previous night. It was so very dark, however, that I bought a lantern and made them light it before I would set out on my three miles' walk. I remember going out of my way to a shop where I was not known. That market-town was our nearest one of any size, I had made it too hot to hold me before I was one-and-twenty, and it hadn't cooled down yet.