Thus he entered upon a new phase of life. He began to mingle again with his fellows, hateful and treacherous dogs though they were. He was no longer morose and solitary. At the next meeting of the Anthropological Society he occupied the Presidential Chair, amid a chorus of (hypocritical) welcome. He accepted invitations to dinner. Also, finding intense discomfort in the ministrations of the vague female, and realising that after making good all Marrable’s defalcations, he was still the possessor of a large fortune, he procured the services of a cook and reinstated his former manservant—luckily disengaged—in office, and again inhabited the commodious apartments which he had abandoned. In fact, he not only resumed his former mode of life, but exceeded it on the social side, walking more abroad into the busy ways of men. In all of which he showed wisdom. For it is manifestly impossible for a man to pursue a successful career of villainy if he locks himself up in the impregnable recesses of a gloomy house and meets no mortal on whom to practise. One afternoon, after deep and dark excogitation, he proceeded to Romney Place and called upon Tommy Burgrave whom he had not seen since the day of the trial. Tommy, just recovering from the attack of congestion of the lungs, which had prevented him from attending his great uncle’s funeral, was sitting in his dressing-gown before the bedroom fire, while Clementina, unkempt as usual, was superintending his consumption of a fried sole. Tommy greeted him boyishly. He couldn’t rise, as his lap was full of trays and fat things. His uncle would find a chair somewhere in the corner. It was jolly of him to come. “You might have come sooner,” snapped Clementina. “The boy has been half dead. If it hadn’t been for me, he would have been quite dead.” “You nursed him through his illness?” “What else do you suppose I meant?” “He could have had a trained nurse,” said Quixtus. “There are such things.” “Trained nurses!” cried Clementina, in disdain. “I’ve no patience with them. If they’re ugly, they’re brutes—because they know that a good-looking boy like Tommy won’t look at them. If they’re pretty, they’re fools, because they’re always hoping that he will.” “I say, Clementina,” Tommy protested. “Nurses are the dearest people in the world. A fellow crocked up is just a ‘case’ for them, and they never think of anything but pulling him through. ‘Tisn’t fair of you to talk like that.” “Isn’t it?” said Clementina, conscious of a greater gap than usual in the back of her blouse, and struggling with one hand to reconcile button and hole. “What on earth do you know about it? Just tell me, are you a woman or am I?” Tommy laid down his fork with a sigh. “You’re an angel, Clementina, and this sole was delicious; and I wish there were more of it.”