His mind was occupied with the details of the interview in which he had just been engaged.

His promotion had lately been rapid, and his work of extraordinary interest.

He had been travelling a great deal, backwards and forwards between London and Versailles, charged with several special enquiries in which he had shown both steadiness and _flair_.

Things were known to him that he could not share even with a friend so old and 'safe' as Aubrey Mannering.

The grip of the coming crisis was upon him, and he seemed 'to carry the world in his breast' 'Next year--next February--where shall we all be ?' The question was automatically suggested to him by the sight of the green buds of the lilac trees In front of Whitehall Terrace.
'Oh, my dear Susan!--do look at those trees!' Chicksands, startled from his own meditations, looked up to see two old ladies gazing with an eager interest at a couple of plane trees, which had just shed a profusion of bark and stood white and almost naked in the grey London air.