Mr. Plantagenet had missed his son by walking through the archway of the Fellows\' Quad, instead of through the Brew House. He emerged from the college by the big front gate. The High Street was lighted and crowded; so he preferred to turn down the dark lanes and alleys at the back of Christ Church, till he came out upon St. Aldate\'s and the road to the river. Somewhat sobered as he still was by the unwonted excitement of that curious episode, he found the sherry once more beginning to gain the upper hand; it was hard for him to walk erect and straight along the pavement of St. Aldate\'s, where a few small shops still stood open—for it was Saturday night—and a few people still loitered about in little knots at the corners. With an effort, however, he managed to maintain the perpendicular till he reached Folly Bridge; then he turned in at the wicket that leads down from the main road to the little tow-path along the dark and silent bank of the swollen Isis.

But if Edmund Plantagenet\'s legs were a trifle unsteady, his heart was all afire with wrath and remorse at this dramatic interlude. For the first time in so many years he began to think bitterly to himself of his wasted opportunities and ruined talents. Such as they were, he had really and truly wasted them; and though perhaps, after all, they were never much to boast of, time had been when Edmund Plantagenet thought highly indeed of them. Nay, in his heart of hearts the broken old dancing-master thought highly of them still, in spite of everything during all those long years. There were nights when he lay awake sobering, on his hard bed at home, and repeated lovingly to himself the \'Stanzas to Evelina\' which he had contributed ages ago to the \'Book of Beauty,\' or the \'Lines on the Death of Wordsworth\' which he printed at the time in the Yorkshire Magazine, with a profound conviction that they contained, after all, some of the really most beautiful and least appreciated poetry in the English language. As a rule, Mr. Plantagenet was fairly contented with himself and his relics of character; it was society—harsh, unfeeling, stupid society—that he blamed most of all for his misfortunes and failures. Still, to every one of us there come now and then moments of genuine self-revelation, when the clouds of egotism and perverse misrepresentation, through which we usually behold our own personality in a glorified halo, fade away before the piercing light of truer introspective analysis, forced suddenly upon us by some disillusioning incident or accident of the moment; and then, for one brief flash, we have the misery and agony of really seeing ourselves as others see us. Such days may Heaven keep kindly away from all of us! Such a day Edmund Plantagenet had now drearily fallen upon. He wandered wildly down the dark bank toward Iflley lasher, his whole soul within him stirred and upheaved with volcanic energy by the shame and disgrace of that evening\'s degradation. The less often a man suffers from these bruts of self-humiliation, the more terrible is their outburst when they finally do arrive to him. Edmund Plantagenet, loathing and despising his present self, by contrast with that younger and idealized image which had perhaps never really existed at all, stumbled in darkness and despair along that narrow path, between the flooded river on one side and the fence that enclosed the damp water-meadows on the other, still more than half drunk, and utterly careless where he went or what on earth might happen to him.

The river in parts had overflowed its banks, and the towing-path for some yards together was often under water. But Mr. Plantagenet, never pausing, walked, slipped, and staggered through the slush and mud, very treacherous under foot, knowing nothing, heeding nothing, save that the coolness about his ankles seemed to revive him a little and to sober his head as he went floundering through it. By-and-by he reached the Long Bridges—a range of frail planks with wooden side-rails, that lead the tow-path across two or three broad stretches of back-water from the Isis. He straggled across somehow, looking down every now and then into the swirling water, where the stars were just reflected in quick flashing eddies, while all the r............