’I suppose it isn’t only good luck; no doubt I have a sort of talent for money-making, but I never knew it before I met Crowther.  By just opening my eyes to the fact that money could be earned in other ways than at the regular kinds of employment, he gave me a start, and I went ahead.  There isn’t a man in the world has suffered more than I have for want of money, and no one ever worked with a fiercer resolve to get out of the hell of contemptible poverty.  It would fill a book, the history of my money-making.  The first big sum I ever was possessed of came to me at the age of two-and-thirty, when I sold a proprietary club (the one Crowther had a share in and which I had ultimately got into my own hands) for nine thousand pounds; but I owed about half of this.  I went on and on, and I got into society; that came through the Marlborough,—­a good story, but I mustn’t tell it.  At last I married—­a rich woman.’

He paused, and I thought, but was not quite sure, that I heard him sigh.

’We won’t talk about that either.  I shall not marry a rich woman again, that’s all.  In fact, I don’t care for such people; my best friends, real friends, are all more or less strugglers, and perhaps there’s no harm in saying that it gives me pleasure to help them when I’ve a chance.  I like to buy a picture of a poor devil artist.  I like to smoke my pipe with good fellows who never go out of their way for money’s sake.  All the same, it’s a good thing to be well off.  But for that, now, I couldn’t make the acquaintance of such people as these at Brackley Hall.  I more than half like them.  Old Armitage is a gentleman, and looks back upon generations of gentlemen, his ancestors.  Ah! you can’t buy that!  And his daughters are devilish nice girls, with sweet soft voices.  I’m glad the old fellow met us yesterday.’

It was now dark; I looked up and saw the stars brightening.  We sat for another quarter of an hour, each busy with his own thoughts, then rose and parted for the night.

A week later, when I returned to London, Ireton was still living at the little inn, and a letter I received from him at the beginning of October told me he had just left.  ‘The country was exquisite that last week,’ he wrote;—­and it struck me that ‘exquisite’ was a word he must have caught from some one else’s lips.

I heard from him again in the following January.  He wrote from the Isle of Wight, and informed me that in the spring he was to be married to Miss Ethel Armitage, second daughter of Humphrey Armitage, Esq., of Brackley Hall.

CHRISTOPHERSON

It was twenty years ago, and on an evening in May.  All day long there had been sunshine.  Owing, doubtless, to the incident I am about to relate, the light and warmth of that long-vanished day live with me still; I can see the great white clouds that moved across the strip of sky before my window, and feel again the spring languor which troubled my solitary work in the heart of London.