Still impenetrably deaf to the raillery of which he was the object, Mr. Bashwood waited until Pedgift Junior had exhausted himself, and then turned quietly away.
"I ought to have known better," he said, in the same absent manner as before. "He is his father's son all over--he would make game of me on my death-bed." He paused a moment at the door, mechanically brushing his hat with his hand, and went out into the street.
The bright sunshine dazzled his eyes, the passing vehicles and foot-passengers startled and bewildered him. He shrank into a by-street, and put his hand over his eyes. "I'd better go home," he thought, "and shut myself up, and think about it in my own room."
His lodging was in a small house, in the poor quarter of the town. He let himself in with his key, and stole softly upstairs. The one little room he possessed met him cruelly, look round it where he might, with silent memorials of Miss Gwilt. On the chimney-piece were the flowers she had given him at various times, all withered long since, and all preserved on a little china pedestal, protected by a glass shade. On the wall hung a wretched colored print of a woman, which he had caused to be nicely framed and glazed, because there was a look in it that reminded him of her face. In his clumsy old mahogany writing-desk were the few letters, brief and peremptory, which she had written to him at the time when he was watching and listening meanly at Thorpe Ambrose to please her. And when, turning his back on these, he sat down wearily on his sofa-bedstead--there, hanging over one end of it, was the gaudy cravat of blue satin, which he had bought because she had told him she liked bright colors, and which he had never yet had the courage to wear, though he had taken it out morning after morning with the resolution to put it on! Habitually quiet in his actions, habitually restrained in his language, he now seized the cravat as if it was a living thing that could feel, and flung it to the other end of the room with an oath.
The time passed; and still, though his resolution to stand between Miss Gwilt and her marriage remained unbroken, he was as far as ever from discovering the means which might lead him to his end. The more he thought and thought of it, the darker and the darker his course in the future looked to him.
He rose again, as wearily as he had sat down, and went to his cupboard. "I'm feverish and thirsty," he said; "a cup of tea may help me." He opened his canister, and measured out his small allowance of tea, less carefully than usual. "Even my own hands won't serve me to-day!" he thought, as he scraped together the few grains of tea that he had spilled, and put them carefully back in the canister.