The professor looked as if he might be going to
have a fit. Mrs. Wainwright lifted her eyes toward
heaven, and flinging out her trembling hands, cried:
" Oh, what an outrage. What an outrage! That
minx-" The concensus of opinion in the first carriage
was perfectly expressed by Peter Tounley, who
with a deep drawn breath, said : " Well, I'm damned! "
Marjory had moaned and lowered her head as from a
sense of complete personal shame. Coleman lit his
cigar and mounted his horse. " Well, I suppose there
is nothing for it but to be off, professor? " His tone
was full of regret, with sort of poetic regret. For a
moment the professor looked at him blankly, and then
gradually recovered part of his usual manner. " Yes,"
he said sadly, " there is nothing for it but to go on."
At a word from the dragoman, the two impatient
drivers spoke gutturally to their horses and the car-
riages whirled out of Arta. Coleman, his dragoman
and the groom trotted in the dust from the wheels of
the Wainwright carriage. The correspondent always
found his reflective faculties improved by the constant
pounding of a horse on the trot, and he was not sorry
to have now a period for reflection, as well as this
artificial stimulant. As he viewed the game he had in his
hand about all the cards that were valuable. In fact,
he considered that the only ace against him was Mrs.
Wainwright. He had always regarded her as a stupid
person, concealing herself behind a mass of trivialities
which were all conventional, but he thought now that
the more stupid she was and the more conventional in
her triviality the more she approached to being the
very ace of trumps itself.
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