Believing that it was his duty, he thirsted on the one hand to fulfill it, whilst, on the other, he recoiled in horror at the thought that the man upon whom he was to wreak that vengeance was his father--albeit a father whom he did not know, who had never seen him, who was not so much as aware of his existence.
He sought forgetfulness in Mr.Gay.He had the delicate-minded man's inherent taste for verse, a quick ear for the melody of words, the aesthete's love of beauty in phrase as of beauty in all else; and culture had quickened his perceptions, developed his capacity for appreciation.

For the tenth time he called Leduc to light his pipe; and, that done, he set his eye to the page once more.

But it was like harnessing a bullock to a cart; unmindful of the way it went and over what it travelled, his eye ambled heavily along the lines, and when he came to turn the page he realized with a start that he had no impression of what he had read upon it.
In sheer disgust he tossed the book aside, and kicking away the second chair, rose lythely.

He crossed to the window, and stood there gazing out at nothing, nor conscious of the incense that came to him from garden, from orchard, and from meadow.
It needed a clatter of hoofs and a cloud of dust approaching from the north to draw his mind from its obsessing thoughts.

He watched the yellow body of the coach as it came furiously onward, its four horses stretched to the gallop, postillion lusty of lungs and whip, and the great trail of dust left behind it spreading to right and left over the flowering hedge-rows to lose itself above the gold-flecked meadowland.
On it came, to draw up there, at the very entrance to Maidstone, at the sign of the "Adam and Eve." Mr.Caryll, leaning on the sill of his window, looked down with interest to see what manner of travellers were these that went at so red-hot a pace.