For the past two months he had seen Poppy St. John but seldom, nor had he heard from her. Whether by accident or by design he knew not, she had rarely been at home on those occasions when he had been free to call. For the last three weeks she had been away up the river, so he understood, with her friend Dot Parris--_alias_ Miss Charlotte Colthrust. A blight seemed to Iglesias to have fallen upon his and her friendship, ever since the day of his return to Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking; and his discovery, or rather divination, of the relation in which de Courcy Smyth stood to her. While her husband remained nameless, an unknown quantity, Dominic deplored the fact of her marriage, but as an abstraction. So soon as that fact had acquired in his mind--whether rightly or wrongly--a name and local habitation, now that he was liable to meet it daily incarnate--and that in most unsavoury shape--liable to be constantly reminded of its near neighbourhood, to witness a thousand and one unpleasing peculiarities of speech, habit, and manner, unlooked-for emotions arose in Iglesias, and those of a character of which he was by no means proud. Resentment took him, indignation, strange movements of jealousy and hatred; all very natural, no doubt, but decidedly bad for the soul. It was idle for him to remind himself that his belief regarding de Courcy Smyth was based upon supposition, upon circumstantial evidence which might prove merely coincident. He could not rid himself of that belief, nor of the emotional consequences of it; and these so vexed him that he questioned whether it would not be better to remove from Cedar Lodge and seek a domicile uninfected by the perpetual provocation of the man's presence. But it was not easy to give a plausible reason to his hostess for any immediate change of residence; nor was it easy, in the present stress of business at the bank, to find time or energy for house-hunting. The atmosphere of Cedar Lodge had become inimical. His rooms had ceased to be a place of security and repose. Yet whither should he go? The great wilderness of London seemed vastly inhospitable when it came to the question of selecting a new dwelling-place.