But at dinner there were plans to be made. Tonight she would go back to the hotel, but tomorrow he would take her up to London. He must instruct his solicitor⁠—Jack Herring. Not a finger must be raised to hinder the process of the Law. Damages exemplary, judicial strictures, costs, what they liked⁠—let it go through at the first moment, so that her neck might be out of chancery at last! Tomorrow he would see Herring⁠—they would go and see him together. And then⁠—abroad, leaving no doubt, no difficulty about evidence, making the lie she had told into the truth. He looked round at her; and it seemed to his adoring eyes that more than a woman was sitting there. The spirit of universal beauty, deep, mysterious, which the old painters, Titian, Giorgione, Botticelli, had known how to capture and transfer to the faces of their women⁠—this flying beauty seemed to him imprinted on her brow, her hair, her lips, and in her eyes.

“And this is to be mine!” he thought. “It frightens me!”