So he passed on, having stood upon the path hardly more than a second or two.
Before he had got up to the new buildings of St.John's a cold sweat had come out all over him.

He was conscious of this, and conscious also that for a time he was so confounded by the apparition of his enemy as to be unable to bring his mind to work properly on the subject.

'Let him do his worst,' he kept on saying to himself; 'let him do his worst.' But he knew that the brave words, though spoken only to himself, were mere braggadocio No doubt the man would do his worst, and very bad it would be to him.

At the moment he was so cowed by fear that he would have given half his fortune to have secured the woman's silence,--and the man's.

How much better would it have been had he acceded to the man's first demand as to restitution of a portion of the sum paid for Polyeuka, before the woman's name had been brought into the matter at all?
But reflections such as these were now useless and he must do something.
It was for his wife's sake,--he assured himself,--for his wife's sake that he allowed himself to be made thus miserable by the presence of this wretched creature.