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Rowland Prothero's position in London society? 'He is scarcely in what is called "society;" but his friends are not likely to be changed by the conduct of his brother-in-in-law. He is far too highly esteemed and admired to be injured by such a man as Howel Jenkins. Freda felt the blood rush to her cheeks, and was convinced that Lady Mary noticed it.
He sat down in a capacious chintz-covered easy chair beside Prothero, lit a cigarette, and came to the point after only a trivial hesitation. "Prothero," he said, "you know what my father is." "I thought he ran a preparatory school." There was the profoundest resentment in Prothero's voice. "And, all the same, I'm going to be a rich man."
He couldn't, for instance, tell her how Billy Prothero, renouncing vanity and all social pretension, had worn a straw hat into November and the last stages of decay, and how it had been burnt by a special commission ceremonially in the great court. He couldn't convey to her the long sessions of beer and tobacco and high thinking that went on in Prothero's rooms into the small hours.
She followed Mr Prothero downstairs and made herself so agreeable to him and Mrs Jonathan, that they quite forgot Mrs Prothero's absence, until the sudden return of that good woman set all matters right, and enabled Miss Gwynne to leave the farm. 'I must have money, said Howel Jenkins as he sat alone with his mother in their little parlour, the evening after Mrs Prothero had left them.
White pieced together his conception of the circles of disturbance that spread out from Benham's pursuit of Prothero's flying messenger. For weeks and months the great town had been uneasy in all its ways because of the insurgent spirits from the south and the disorder from the north, because of endless rumours and incessant intrigue.
The knowledge that in the rear of the house there was a means of retreat by a servants' stairway, or over the roof of an adjoining building, or by a friendly fire-escape, would at least, lend him confidence in his adventure. Accordingly, in spite of Prothero's threat, he determined at once to reconnoitre.
She had been thinking again on all these things during that gloomy drive, when her companions thought she was asleep. Bright lights are in the windows and passage as the travellers look out of the carriage. Mrs Prothero's anxious face is visible in front, Mr and Mrs Jonathan's tall forms above her from behind, the servants are without, Lion is barking joyously, but there is no Mr Prothero.
Already when Benham came to London he had begun to dream of possibilities that went beyond the accidental states and empires of to-day. Prothero's mind, replete with historical detail, could find nothing but absurdity in the alliances and dynasties and loyalties of our time. "Patched up things, Benham, temporary, pretentious.
He closed the door behind him and went in a state of profound thought to his own room.... Presently Prothero came to him with a vague inopportune desire to explain what so evidently did not need explaining. He walked about the room trying ways of putting it, while Benham packed. In an unaccountable way Prothero's bristling little mind seemed to have shrunken to something sleek and small.
Before Benham could at all realize what was happening he found his way to the river-boat on which he supposed Prothero to be detained, barred by a vigorous street fight. Explanations were impossible; he joined in the fight. For three days that fight developed round the mystery of Prothero's disappearance.
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