'A most unsatisfactory and ridiculous conclusion,' said he to himself, dropping from the hurried pace at which he had quitted the house into a leisurely amble; 'most unsatisfactory and highly ridiculous, to think that a man of my experience, who has been in the habit of treating matters of this kind for so many years, and with so many different styles of persons, should allow himself to be shut up and put down by that mild-spoken innocent, is beyond all powers of comprehension. I suppose it was because she was innocent that I gave way. I had expected something so completely different, that when it dawned upon me that she was speaking the truth, and that she actually had believed herself to be that old rascal's wife, I was so taken aback, that my usual _savoir-faire_ completely deserted me. No doubt about the fact, though I think women's attempts at innocence are generally spoiled by being overdone; but this seemed in every way to be the genuine article. What a scoundrel must that Calverley have been This is just another instance of those men who are so highly respectable, and looked up to as patterns of all the domestic virtues, turning out after death to have been the most consummate hypocrites and shams, and infinitely worse than most of us, who, because we are less circumspect, have obtained the reputation of being black sheep. I myself never went in for being particularly straitlaced, but certainly I was never guilty of such a cold-blooded piece of villany as that perpetrated by the respectable patriarch of Great Walpole-street. 'What an idiot I was not to have recognised at once that a person of her appearance and manner could not be what she seemed, not to have discovered that she was in a false position, and ignorant herself of what must have been thought about her! Then, of course, I should have approached her in a different manner, made other plans equally easy of execution and far more certain of success. What an idiot I am,' he continued, striking his cane with vehemence against the ground, 'to think about her any more! There are hundreds of women quite as pretty and far more fascinating who would be only too well pleased to receive any attention from me, so why do I worry myself about one who has given me such a decided rebuff. Why? Most likely from the fact that that very rebuff has given piquancy to the adventure, that I am disinclined, because unaccustomed, to sit down under a sense of failure, and because--there!--because she seems to have bewitched me, and at my time of life, with all my experience, I am as much in love with her as if I were a boy suffering under my first passion.'