But before dinner was ended he had to admit that this precaution was
excessive. Rickman (barring certain dreadful possibilities of speech)
was really by no means unpresentable. He was attired with perfect
sanity. His methods at the dinner table, if at all unusual, erred on
the side of restraint rather than of extravagance; he gave indications
of a certain curious personal refinement; and in the matter of wine he
was almost incredibly abstemious. It was the first time that Jewdwine
had come to close quarters with his disciple, and with some surprise
he saw himself going through the experience without a shock. Either he
had been mistaken in Rickman, or Rickman had improved. Shy he still
was, but he had lost much of his old ungovernable nervousness, and
gave Jewdwine the impression of an immense reserve. He seemed to have
entered into some ennobling possession which raised him above the
region of small confusions and excitements. His eye, when Jewdwine
caught it, no longer struggled to escape; but it seemed to be held
less by him than by its own controlling inner vision.
Jewdwine watched him narrowly. It never entered into his head that
what he was watching was the effect of three weeks' intercourse with
Lucia Harden. He attributed it to Rickman's deliverance from the shop.
To be sure Rickman did not strike him as particularly happy, but this
again he accounted for by the depressing state of his finances.
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