Reminded of this obligation, figuratively he seized Michael Lanyard by the
scruff of his neck and shook him with a savage hand. What insensate folly
was ever his, what want of wit and strength to keep out of temptation's
ways! Why must he have fallen in so readily with her suggestion? Why this
infatuate thirst for sympathy, this eagerness to violate the seals of
reticence at the wish of a strange woman? Was there any reasonable
explanation of the strange lack of his wonted self-sufficiency in the
company of Cecelia Brooke?
No matter. If he might not contrive somehow to squirm out of that
engagement, he could at all events school himself to decent reticence. He
promised himself to make his account of the submarine adventure drearily
bald and trite, to minimize to the last degree his part therein, above all
things to refrain from painting the Lone Wolf in romantic colours.
She was much too good a sort, too straight, sincere, fair-minded,
honest--the sort of girl who deserved the Thackeray sort of man, never a
thief.
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