Geoffrey Dawling had on his return to England written me two or three letters: his last information had been that he was going into the figures of rural illiteracy.

I was delighted to receive it and had no doubt that if he should go into figures they would, as they are said to be able to prove anything, prove at least that my advice was sound and that he had wasted time enough.
This quickened on my part another hope, a hope suggested by some roundabout rumour--I forget how it reached me--that he was engaged to a girl down in Hampshire.

He turned out not to be, but I felt sure that if only he went into figures deep enough he would become, among the girls down in Hampshire or elsewhere, one of those numerous prizes of battle whose defences are practically not on the scale of their provocations.

I nursed in short the thought that it was probably open to him to develop as one of the types about whom, as the years go on, superficial critics wonder without relief how they ever succeeded in dragging a bride to the altar.

He never alluded to Flora Saunt; and there was in his silence about her, quite as in Mrs.Meldrum's, an element of instinctive tact, a brief implication that if you didn't happen to have been in love with her there was nothing to be said.
Within a week after my return to London I went to the opera, of which I had always been much of a devotee.