He betook himself to his usual consolation—a cigar and puffed away at it crossly, wondering what he should do with himself. He was sick of La Marina for the time being—there were no race-meetings on, and he felt that to be thus left to his own resources was a truly unkind dispensation of Providence. He had a very limited brain capacity, his one idea of life being to get amusement out of it somehow. Perpetual amusement is apt to tire; but of this the votaries of so-called pleasure never think, till they are flung back upon themselves exhausted. Carlyon would have been in his right place had he been born as a noble of high rank in ancient Pompeii—going to the baths, having his hair combed and his garments scented; wearing fresh chaplets of flowers round his neck, being fed on the rarest delicacies and drinking the costliest wines, and dividing his affections between several of the prettiest dancing girls. Such an existence would have suited him perfectly, and it is quite possible that when Vesuvius blazed forth its convincing representation of the Day of Judgment, he would have fronted his fate with the stern composure of the immortal ‘Roman soldier’; for it is precisely such pampered persons who are the best possible food for flame, or powder and shot; and who generally, as though moved by some instinctive perception of the worthlessness of their lives to the world, meet death with equanimity. In the interim, while her husband was preparing what he considered a Parthian shot for her in the way of the press-cutting from the society scandal bill called _Honesty_, Delicia had, by the merest chance, bought the paper and read the paragraph on her way down to Broadstairs. She was a woman who never wasted time about anything, and on arriving at her destination she enclosed the paper in an envelope to her lawyers, with the brief instruction appended—: ‘Insist on immediate retraction and apology. If refused, take proceedings.’