The equipage graced our street upon
one paltry excuse or another for the better part of an hour, the woman
being minded that none of us should longer question her supremacy over
the next and eleventh Earl of Brinstead.
Not for another hour did the effects of the sensation die out among
tradesmen and the street crowds. It was like waves that recede but
gradually. They talked. They stopped to talk. They passed on talking.
They hissed vivaciously; they rose to exclamations. I mean to say,
there was no end of a gabbling row about it.
There was in my mind no longer any room for hesitation. The quite
harshest of extreme measures must be at once adopted before all was
too late. I made my way to the telegraph office. It was not a time for
correspondence by post.
Afterward I had myself put through by telephone to Belknap-Jackson.
With his sensitive nature he had stopped in all day. Although still
averse to appearing publicly, he now consented to meet me at my
chambers late that evening.
"The whole town is seething with indignation," he called to me. "It
was disgraceful. I shall come at ten. We rely upon you."
Again I saw that he was concerned solely with his humiliation as a
would-be host. Not yet had he divined that the deluded Honourable
George might go to the unspeakable length of a matrimonial alliance
with the woman who had enchained him.
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