His hopelessly
masculine ingenuousness is displayed in a touching way by his care to
procure some woman to attend on Flora. The condition of guaranteed
perfect respectability gave him moments of anxious thought. When he
remembered suddenly his steward's wife he must have exclaimed _eureka_
with particular exultation. One does not like to call Anthony an ass.
But really to put any woman within scenting distance of such a secret and
suppose that she would not track it out!
No woman, however simple, could be as ingenuous as that. I don't know
how Flora de Barral qualified him in her thoughts when he told her of
having done this amongst other things intended to make her comfortable. I
should think that, for all _her_ simplicity, she must have been appalled.
He stood before her on the appointed day outwardly calmer than she had
ever seen him before. And this very calmness, that scrupulous attitude
which he felt bound in honour to assume then and for ever, unless she
would condescend to make a sign at some future time, added to the
heaviness of her heart innocent of the most pardonable guile.
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