He certainly had anxieties enough this Autumn to bring down his happiness to a very muted key. The head and front of these “whips and scorns of time” had been a complete break with Urquhart. The Squire’s obsessions had got upon his nerves to such an extent that he had just recklessly revolted⁠—flung up his work on this detestable history of Dorsetshire scandals⁠—and, cutting his coat to suit his cloth, fallen back upon a rigid monotony and economy between Preston Lane and the School.