Tulks & Crowe, private inquiry agents; and long before this he had grown careless whether they succeeded or not.

An impulse of curiosity; nothing more.

Well, yes; a fondness for playing with secrets, a disposition to get power into his hands--excited to activity just after a long pleasant talk with Lilian.

He was sorry this letter had come; yet it made him smile, which perhaps nothing else would have done just now.
"To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering." The quotation was often in his mind, and he had never felt its force so profoundly as this afternoon.

The worst of it was, he did not believe himself a victim of inherent weakness; rather of circumstances which persistently baffled him.