Miss Dorothea said: 'You, Victor, always.' Miss Virginia said: 'You will be sure of welcome.' He walked out upon the moonless night; and for lack of any rounded object in the smothering darkness to look at, he could nowhere take moorings to gather himself together and define the man who had undergone so portentous a defeat.

He was glad of quarters at an hotel, a solitary bed, absence from his Nataly.
For their parts, the ladies were not less shattered.

They had no triumph in their victory: the weight of it bore them down.

They closed, locked, shot the bolts and fastened the chain of the door.

They had to be reminded by the shaking of their darling dog Tasso's curly silky coat, that he had not taken his evening's trot to notify malefactors of his watchfulness and official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied one.
Without consultation, they unbolted the door, and Tasso went forth, to 'compose his vesper hymn,' as Mr.Posterley once remarked amusingly.
Though not pretending to the Muse's crown so far, the little dog had qualities to entrance the spinster sex.