Philip did not feel much more comfortable as he went away; he felt that he had done nothing but scold Lucy, and indeed his inclination was to find fault with her, to punish her if he could for the contradiction of circumstances. That she should be capable of taking away all that fortune and bestowing it upon some one who was a stranger, who had nothing to do with the Rainys and who would probably condescend to, if he did not despise, the head of that family, Philip himself, was intolerable to him. He felt that he ought to interfere, he ought to prevent it, he ought to secure this wealth to himself. But then something gave him a tug exactly in the opposite direction. If it had but been Katie Russell who was the heiress! She was nobody; it would be madness for him, a young man on his promotion, to marry thus as it were in his own trade, and condemn himself to be nothing but a school-master forever. Indeed it would be folly to marry at all--unless he married Lucy. A young man who is not married has still metaphorically all the world before him. He is very useful for a dinner-party, to fill up a corner. In most cases he is more or less handy to have about the house, to make himself of use. But a man who is married has come out from among the peradventures, and has his place fixed in society, whatever it may be. He has come to what promotion is possible, so far as society is concerned--unless indeed he has the power to advance himself without the aid of society. Katie Russell was a simple impossibility, Philip said to himself angrily, and Lucy--she was also an impossibility. There seemed nothing to be done all round but to rail against fate. When he had settled this with a great deal of heat and irritation, he suddenly dropped all at once into the serenest waters, into an absolute lull of all vexation, into that state of semi-trance in which, though walking along Farafield Streets, toward Kent’s Lane, he was at the same time wandering on the edge of the common, with a soft rustle beside him of a muslin dress, and everything soft, from the stars in the sky, and the night air blowing in his face, to his own heart, which was very soft indeed, melting with the tenderest emotion. It could not do any one any harm to let himself go for this night only upon such a soft delightful current. And thus after all the agitations of the day, he ended it with his head in the clouds. CHAPTER XXXVI. THE HARE WITH MANY FRIENDS.