In the perplexity that had come upon him, Basil Morton seemed to have nothing more than his deserts.

'Best of mothers and of wives', forsooth! An excellent housekeeper, no doubt, but what shadow of qualification for wifehood and motherhood in this year 1886?
The whole question was disgusting to a rational man--especially to that vigorous example of the class, by name Harvey Rolfe.
Late as it was, he did not care to go to bed.

This morning he had brought home a batch of books from the London Library, and he began to turn them over, with the pleasure of anticipation.

Not seldom of late had Harvey flattered himself on the growth of intellectual gusto which proceeded in him together with a perceptible decline of baser appetites, so long his torment and his hindrance.

His age was now seven and thirty; at forty he might hope to have utterly trodden under foot the instincts at war with mental calm.