Mr. Prohack said nothing audible, but to himself he said:  “She actually choked off her curiosity about the necklace so as not to give me away!  There could never have been another woman like her in the whole history of human self-control!  She’s prodigious!”

And then he wondered what could have happened in regard to the necklace.  He foresaw more trouble there.  And the splendour of the morning had faded.  An appalling silence descended upon the whole house.  To escape from its sinister spell Mr. Prohack departed and sought the seclusion of his secondary club, which he had not entered for a very long time. (He dared not face the lively amenities of his principal club.) He pretended, at the secondary club, that he had never ceased to frequent the place regularly, and to that end he put on a nonchalant air; but he was somewhat disconcerted to find, from the demeanour of his acquaintances there, that he positively had not been missed to any appreciable extent.  He decided that the club was a dreary haunt, and could not understand why he had never before perceived its dreariness.  The members seemed to be scarcely alive; and in particular they seemed to have conspired together to behave and talk as though humanity consisted of only one sex,—­their own.  Mr. Prohack, worried though he was by a too acute realisation of the fact that humanity did indeed consist of two sexes, despised the lot of them.  And yet simultaneously the weaker part of him envied them, and he fully admitted, in the abstract, that something might convincingly be said in favour of monasteries.  It was a most strange experience.

After a desolating lunch of excellent dishes, perfect coffee which left a taste in his mouth, and a fine cigar which he threw away before it was half finished, he abandoned the club and strolled in the direction of Manchester Square.  But he lacked the courage to go into the noble mansion, and feebly and aimlessly proceeded northward until he arrived at Marylebone Road and saw the great historic crimson building of Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks.  His mood was such that he actually, in a wild and melancholy caprice, paid money to enter this building and enquired at once for the room known as the Chamber of Horrors....  When he emerged his gloom had reached the fantastic, hysteric, or giggling stage, and his conception of the all-embracingness of London was immensely enlarged.

“Miss Sissie and Mr. Morfey are with Mrs. Prohack, sir,” said Brool, in a quite ordinary tone, taking the hat and coat of his returned master in the hall of the noble mansion.

Mr. Prohack started.

“Give me back my hat and coat,” said he.  “Tell your mistress that I may not be in for dinner.”  And he fled.