To recognise the propriety of this particular pilgrimage--she lived far enough off, in long Cadogan Place--was already in fact to work it off a little.

A perception of the propriety of formally thanking her, and of timing the act just as he happened to be doing--this, he made out as he went, was obviously all that had been the matter with him.

It was true that he had mistaken the mood of the moment, misread it rather, superficially, as an impulse to look the other way--the other way from where his pledges had accumulated.

Mrs.Assingham, precisely, represented, embodied his pledges--was, in her pleasant person, the force that had set them successively in motion.

She had MADE his marriage, quite as truly as his papal ancestor had made his family--though he could scarce see what she had made it for unless because she too was perversely romantic.