Gilbert Fenton took upon himself the management of the business.  He had a clear comprehensive intellect, which adapted itself very easily to commerce.  He put his shoulder to the wheel with a will, and worked for the first three years of his business career as it is not given to many men to work in the course of their lives.  By that time the ship had been steered clear of all rocks and quicksands, and rode the commercial waters gallantly.  Gilbert was not a rich man, but was in a fair way to become a rich man; and the name of Fenton stood as high as in the palmiest days of his father’s career.

His sister had fortunately married Martin Lister some years before her father’s death, and had received her dowry at the time of her marriage.  Gilbert had only himself to work for.  At first he had worked for the sake of his dead father’s honour and repute; later he fell into a groove, like other men, and worked for the love of money-making—­not with any sordid love of money, but with that natural desire to accumulate which grows out of a business career.

To-night he was in an unusually thoughtful humour, and inclined to weigh things in the balance with a doubtfulness as to their value which was new to him.  The complete idleness and emptiness of his life in the country had made him meditative.  Was it worth living, that monotonous business life of his?  Would not the time soon come in which its dreariness would oppress him as the dulness of Lidford House had oppressed him to-night?  His youth was fast going—­nay, had it not indeed gone from him for ever? had not youth left him all at once when he began his commercial career?—­and the pleasures that had been fresh enough within the last few years were rapidly growing stale.  He knew the German spas, the pine-groves where the hand played, the gambling-saloons and their company, by heart, though he had never stayed more than a fortnight at any one of them.  He had exhausted Brittany and the South of France in these rapid scampers; skimmed the cream of their novelty, at any rate.  He did not care very much for field-sports, and hunted and shot in a jog-trot safe kind of way, with a view to the benefit of his health, which savoured of old bachelorhood.  And as for the rest of his pleasures—­the social rubber at his club, the Blackwall or Richmond dinners—­it seemed only custom that made them agreeable.

“If I had gone to the Bar, as I intended to do before my father’s death, I should have had an object in life,” he thought, as he puffed slowly at his cigar; “but a commercial man has nothing to hope for in the way of fame—­nothing to work for except money.  I have a good mind to sell the business, now that it is worth selling, and go in for the Bar after all, late as it is.”

He had thought of this more than once; but he knew the fancy was a foolish one, and that his friends would laugh at him for his folly.