He could have beaten himself with stripes for it.
But it could never happen again--never, never!
He told himself that with proud, resolute reiteration,
as he got his hat and stick, and put in his pockets
one or two papers from the desk, and then glanced about
the Board Room for what was, most likely, the last time.
Here he had won his great victory over Fate, here he had
put his enemies under his feet, and if innocent simpletons
had wandered into the company of these foes, it mattered
not a whit to him that they also had been crushed.
Figuratively, he turned his back upon them now; he left them,
slain and trampled, in the Board Room behind him.
They no longer concerned him.
Figuratively, too, as he walked with firmness to the door,
he stepped over the body of old Tavender, upon the threshold,
and bestowed upon it a downward mental glance, and passed on.
By the time he reached the street, the memory of Tavender
had become the merest shred of a myth. As he strode on,
it seemed to him that his daughters came again, and took
his hands, and moved lovingly beside him--lovingly and still
more admiringly than before.
CHAPTER XXII
BY the autumn of the following year, a certain small
proportion of the people inhabiting the district
in Hertfordshire which set its clocks by the dial over
the stable-tower of Pellesley Court had accustomed
themselves to give the place its new name of High Thorpe.
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