Gilbert Fenton put down his cup and went over to one of the open windows.  It was nearly as dark as it was likely to be that midsummer night.  A new moon was shining faintly in the clear evening sky; and here and there a solitary star shone with a tremulous brightness.  The shadows of the trees made spots of solemn darkness on the wide lawn before the windows, and a warm faint sweetness came from the crowded flower-beds, where all the flowers in this light were of one grayish silvery hue.

“It’s almost too warm an evening for the house,” said Gilbert; “I think I’ll take a stroll.”

“I’d come with you, old fellow, but I’ve been all round the farm, and I’m dead beat,” said good-natured Martin Lister.

“Thanks, Martin; I wouldn’t think of disturbing you.  You look the picture of comfort in that easy-chair.  I shall only stay long enough to finish a cigar.”

He walked slowly across the lawn—­a noble stretch of level greensward with dark spreading cedars and fine old beeches scattered about it; he walked slowly towards the gates, lighting his cigar as he went, and thinking.  He was thinking of his past life, and of his future.  What was it to be?  A dull hackneyed course of money-making, chequered only by the dreary vicissitudes of trade, and brightened only by such selfish pleasures as constitute the recreations of a business man—­an occasional dinner at Blackwall or Richmond, a week’s shooting in the autumn, a little easy-going hunting in the winter, a hurried scamper over some of the beaten continental roads, or a fortnight at a German spa?  These had been his pleasures hitherto, and he had found life pleasant enough.  Perhaps he had been too busy to question the pleasantness of these things.  It was only now that he found himself away from the familiar arena of his daily life, with neither employment nor distraction, that was able to look back upon his career deliberately, and risk himself whether it was one that he could go on living without weariness for the remainder of his days.

He had been at this time a little more than seven years in business.  He had been bred-up with no expectation of ever having to take his place in the counting-house, had been educated at Eton and Oxford, and had been taught to anticipate a handsome fortune from his father.  All these expectations had been disappointed by Mr. Fenton’s sudden death at a period of great commercial disturbance.  The business was found in a state of entanglement that was very near insolvency; and wise friends told Gilbert Fenton that the only hope of coming well out of these perplexities lay with himself.  The business was too good to be sacrificed, and the business was all his father had left behind him, with the exception of a houseful of handsome furniture, two or three carriages, and a couple of pairs of horses, which were sold by auction within a few weeks of the funeral.