Not to be at the breakfast and see the best of the fun, disgusted him.
However, he remembered that he was a philosopher, and the strong disgust
he felt was only expressed in concentrated cynicism on every earthly
matter engendered by the conversation. They walked side by side into
Kensington Gardens. The hero was mouthing away to himself, talking by
fits.

Presently he faced Adrian, crying: "And I might have stopped it! I see
it now! I might have stopped it by going straight to him, and asking him
if he dared marry a girl who did not love him. And I never thought of
it. Good heaven! I feel this miserable affair on my conscience."

"Ah!" groaned Adrian. "An unpleasant cargo for the conscience, that! I
would rather carry anything on mine than a married couple. Do you
purpose going to him now?"

The hero soliloquized: "He's not a bad sort of man."...

"Well, he's not a Cavalier," said Adrian, "and that's why you wonder your
aunt selected him, no doubt? He's decidedly of the Roundhead type, with
the Puritan extracted, or inoffensive, if latent."

"There's the double infamy!" cried Richard, "that a man you can't call
bad, should do this damned thing!"

"Well, it's hard we can't find a villain."

"He would have listened to me, I'm sure."

"Go to him now, Richard, my son. Go to him now. It's not yet too late.