"Will you oblige me," he said, with kindness, "by never speaking of
this again?"
"If you will first grant me one test of my Opinion. Will you meet
Northway in some public place where Mr. Glazzard can be easily seen,
and ask the man to point out his informant--Mr. Marks?"
After much debate, and with great reluctance, he consented. From his
conversation of an hour ago he knew that Glazzard would be at the
Academy on the morrow. He had expressed a hope for a meeting there.
At the Academy, accordingly, the test should be applied. It was all
a fabrication; Northway, laying some new plot, might already know
Glazzard by sight. But the latter should be put on his guard, and
Mrs. Wade should then be taught that henceforth she was forbidden to
concern herself with his--Quarrier's--affairs.
He went home and passed a cheerless time until the next morning.
Suspicion, in spite of himself, crept into his thoughts. He was sick
at heart under the necessity, perhaps life-long, of protecting
Lilian's name against a danger which in itself was a sort of
pollution. His sanguine energy enabled him to lose the thought, at
ordinary times, of the risks to which he himself was exposed; but
occasionally he reflected that public life might even yet be made
impossible for him, and then he cursed the moral stupidity of people
in general.
At eleven o'clock next morning he entered Burlington House.
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