So James Dadd, misplaced and ill at ease, passed thus through life with occasional spasmodic attempts at the assumption of a defiant self-complacency. He knew that he was an outcast from St. Eldred’s. Even if he would, he could never now return to the red-brick house of his early years. In the flesh, perhaps, he might, but his spirit could never again be admitted within its doors, could never again be admitted to intimacy by the spirit of St. Eldred’s. Rashly he had cut himself off from his own people, and must henceforth face the fact. Nor, though either diffident or vehement in the spending of his money, could he really contemplate returning to the life of Darnley-on-Downe. He had tasted of headier joys--tasted awkwardly, perhaps, and incompletely, but even so the small-beer on which St. Eldred’s had reared him must for evermore be insipid to his palate. Though now he never heard from his brother Robert, he sympathized with his revolt, and resolved that he, too, could never again have any part in the life of Darnley-on-Downe. And at this point, just after the one brief tragic flash of romance that broke into his life, he came across Lady Kirk-Hammerton. Lady Kirk-Hammerton was the sonless widow of a second-rate Lord Chancellor. Devoid of wealth or breeding, she and her husband had had recourse to blatancy to emphasize their value. Now that he was dead she redoubled the intensity of her methods, and soon acquired that notoriety which she considered synonymous with fame. Bereft of her husband, there was no reason why people should ever take notice of her again, unless her demeanour forced them to do so. Therefore she set herself heroically to the task of making her existence conspicuous in the eye of the world, with such success that, with the best resolve, nobody could succeed in ignoring her. Physically and metaphorically, she shouted her way from place to place, and her conversation blazed no less obtrusively than her gowns. As for a foil, she felt that her brilliancy needed none, and therefore had no reason for tolerating her daughter’s incorrigible respectability. With the more joy, therefore, did she fall upon James Dadd at Naples, and hurl him, not unwilling, into the company of her undesirable offspring.