He exhibited an anguish that they were not able to commiserate.  Certain expressions falling from him led them to guess that he had set some plot in motion, which Emilia’s flight had arrested; but his tragic outcries were all on the higher ground of the loss to Art.  They were glad to see him go from the house.  Soon he returned to demand Wilfrid’s address.  Arabella wrote it out for him with rebuking composure.  Then he insisted upon having Captain Gambier’s, whom he described as “ce nonchalant dandy.”

“Him you will have a better opportunity of seeing by waiting here,” said Adela; and the captain came before Mr. Pericles had retreated.  “Ce nonchalant” was not quite true to his title, when he heard that Emilia had flown.  He did not say much, but iterated “Gone!” with an elegant frown, adding, “She must come back, you know!” and was evidently more than commonly puzzled and vexed, pursuing the strain in a way that satisfied Mr. Pericles more thoroughly than Adela.

“She shall come back as soon as she has a collar,” growled Mr. Pericles, meaning captivity.

“If she’d only come back with her own maiden name,” interjected Mrs. Chump, “I’ll give her a character; but, upon my hon’r—­d’ye think ut possible, now...?”

Arabella talked over her, and rescued her father’s name.

The noisy sympathy and wild speculations of the Tinleys and Copleys had to be endured.  On the whole, the feeling toward Emilia was kind, and the hope that she would come to no harm was fervently expressed by all the ladies; frequently enough, also, to show the opinion that it might easily happen.  On such points Mrs. Chump never failed to bring the conversation to a block.  Supported as they were by Captain Gambier, Edward Buxley, Freshfield Sumner, and more than once by Sir Twickenham (whom Freshfield, launching angry shafts, now called the semi-betrothed, the statistical cripple, and other strong things that show a developing genius for street-cries and hustings—­epithets in every member of the lists of the great Rejected, or of the jilted who can affect to be philosophical), notwithstanding these aids, the ladies of Brookfield were crushed by Mrs. Chump.  Her main offence was, that she revived for them so much of themselves that they had buried.  “Oh! the unutterably sordid City life!” It hung about her like a smell of London smoke.  As a mere animal, they passed her by, and had almost come to a state of mind to pass her off.  It was the phantom, or rather the embodiment of their First Circle, that they hated in the woman.  She took heroes from the journals read by servant-maids; she thought highly of the Court of Aldermen; she went on public knees to the aristocracy; she was proud, in fact, of all City appetites.  What, though none saw the peculiar sting?  They felt it; and one virtue in possessing an ‘ideal’ is that, lodging in you as it does, it insists upon the interior being furnished by your personal satisfaction,