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It was soon made clear enough that Thistlewood's plot was a conspiracy which included only a very small number of men, and it has never been quite certain whether it was not originally put in motion by the machination of some of the paid spies and informers whom it was believed, at that time, to be the duty of the Ministry to keep in its service for the detection and the frustration of revolutionary conspiracy.
He and his rival happening to sit opposite to each other at a restaurant table, high words arose between them, and the Frenchman eventually made a stab at Thistlewood's hand with his dinner-fork. That ended the dispute, but the finger had to come off. Not long afterwards Thistlewood accepted an engagement to go as artist with a party of English explorers into Siberia.
They knew to what to resign themselves, and even Lady Thistlewood's tempestuous grief had so spent itself that late in the evening the family sat round the fire in the hall, the old lord dozing as one worn out with sorrow, the others talking in hushed tones of that bright boyhood, that joyous light quenched in the night of carnage.
'Did you not hear the lad shouting for 'Phil, Phil! almost in a voice like old times? It does one good to hear it. Just at twilight, Berenger came down the steps, conducting a graceful gentleman in black, to whom Lady Thistlewood's instinct impelled her to make a low courtesy, before Berenger had said, 'Madam, allow me to present to you my friend, the Abbe de Mericour.
Then in spite of herself she listened for Thistlewood's voice in the Responses, and not detecting it, was impelled to look for him. He also was absent, and she began to quake a little. Was it possible they had stayed outside to quarrel?
That butterfly nature of poor Lane's forced Thistlewood's virtues into prominence by contrast, and the girl had them almost constantly in her thoughts. There was nothing she told herself remorsefully that this typical piece of solidity and devotion would not do for her. Her faith in his attachment transcended bounds, and she felt it to be a thousand pities that she could not love him.
'It was only a fancy, said Alma, smiling rather coldly; and she felt more desirous than ever of watching her husband in Thistlewood's presence. Unexpectedly, from her point of view, the two men got along together very well indeed.
This certainty was the less to be endured, because Bertha had the sincerest desire to close with heavenly rather than with earthly meditations on a Sunday, but she could no more help being flustered by the thought of Lane Protheroe, and being chilled by the anticipation of Thistlewood's look of bulldog fidelity, than she could help breathing.
Thistlewood was generally admitted to be a well-ballasted personage a man steady, resolved, serious, entirely trustworthy. 'John Thistlewood's word is as good as his bond, said one of his admirers one day in his presence. 'John Thistlewood's word is his bond, said John Thistlewood, 'as any man's ought to be.
John's hands against the charms, elixirs, and nostrums with which Lady Thistlewood's friends supplied her, plasters from the cunning women of Lyme Regis, made of powder of giant's bones, and snakes prayed into stone by St. Aldhelm, pills of live woodlice, and fomentations of living earthworms and spiders.
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