Alexina, who still hoped that she would
always be able to regard Life as God's good joke, rather sympathized with
him, and assured him that he would have nothing to apprehend from Gora in
the future: she had no more fervent wish than to keep out of his way.
II
He found himself on the whole very comfortable. Maria was always most kind,
Alexina polite and amiable, and Tom "decent." Joan liked him as well as
she liked anybody, and when the family spent a quiet evening at home he
undertook to improve her dancing and she was correspondingly grateful;
it had been her weak point. The fiction was carefully preserved that the
Dwights were conferring a favor on the Abbotts and that all expenses were
equally shared. In time he came to believe it, and his hours of deep
depression, when he had pondered over his inexplicable roguery, grew rarer
and finally ceased. After all he had had nothing to lose as far as Alexina
was concerned; one's sister hardly mattered (Did women matter much,
anyhow?); and his sense of security, which he hugged at this time as the
most precious thing he had ever possessed, at last made him a little
arrogant. He had done what he should not, of course, but it was over and
done with, ancient history; and where other men had gone to State's Prison
for less, he had been protected like an infant from a rude wind. He knew
that he would never do it again and that his position in life was as
assured as it ever had been.
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