The men glanced up at a solitary figure which now appeared descending the broad staircase. In silence, and with a studied expression of contempt, without a look either to the right or to the left, the unpopular leader passed through the hall and out into the street.
"A lonely beggar, after all," said Bradwyn.
Reckage was dining at home that evening with Orange, whose marriage was to take place at the Alberian Embassy on the morrow. The young man was not in good spirits at his friend's step, for he himself was about to take a wife also, and much of the apprehension which he felt on his own account found its vent in dreary soliloquies on the risk, sacrifices, responsibilities, and trouble involved by the single act of saddling oneself for a lifetime with some one woman. Reckage, for his own part, had loved one lady very well, yet not so madly that he could resign himself to loving her only, to the exclusion of all others. He walked along toward Almouth House in a mood of many vexations, cursing the impudence of Bradwyn and Ullweather, wondering whether he had done wisely, after all, in engaging himself to the blameless Miss Carillon, sighing a little over a rumour which had reached him about Sara de Treverell and the Duke of Marshire, deploring the obstinacy of Robert Orange where Mrs. Parflete was concerned. He admitted that Mrs. Parflete was an exceedingly beautiful, young, and, as it happened, rich person. He owned her delightfulness for a man of Robert's dreamy, romantic, intense temperament. But marriage between two idealists so highly strung, and so passionately attached as these two beings were--what would happen? No doubt they would be able to endure the inevitable disillusions--(inevitable because Nature is before all things sensual and has no care for mental prejudices one way or the other)--the inevitable disillusions of family life. It was scarcely possible that the devotion of Robert and Mrs. Parflete would not waver or seem less exquisite under this discipline. Their dream of love would become unparadised. It would gain a sadness, a melancholy, a note of despair hard to endure and most difficult to repress. Reckage had no transcendentalism in his own philosophy: he divided men into two classes--those who read, and those who could not stand, Dante. He included himself among the latter with a frankness at once astonishing and welcome even to numbers who thought him, in most matters, a hypocrite. The hold of the world was growing daily stronger upon him. His ambitions were already sullied by many unworthy and deadening ideas. He dwelt a great deal on the fleetingness of life, and the wisdom of making the best of its few charming things. Food, and wine, and money, and fine houses, and amusements were subjects on which he expended a large amount of silent enthusiasm. But, for all this, he could still see much to admire--perhaps to envy--in Robert's more spiritual mind, and he dreaded--as men often do dread in such cases--the effect of a woman's companionship on so ascetic a character.