“I don’t care about lively evenings.  I have been nowhere in society since I returned from Melbourne.  I have done with all that kind of thing.”

“My dear Gilbert, that sort of renunciation will never do,” John Saltram said earnestly.  “A man cannot turn his back upon society at your age.  Life lies all before you, and it rests with yourself to create a happy future.  Let the dead bury their dead.”

“Yes, John; and what is left for the living when that burial is over?  I don’t want to make myself obnoxious by whining over my troubles, but they are not to be lessened by philosophy, and I can do nothing but bear them as best I may.  I had long been growing tired of society, in the conventional acceptation of the word, and all the stereotyped pleasures of a commercial man’s life.  Those things are less than nothing when a man has nothing brighter and fairer beyond them—­no inner life by which the common things of this world are made precious.  It is only dropping out of the arena a little earlier than I might have done otherwise.  I have a notion that I shall wind up my affairs next year, sell my business, and go abroad.  I could manage to retire upon a very decent income, in spite of my losses the other day.”

“Don’t dream of that, Gilbert; for heaven’s sake, don’t dream of anything so mad as that.  What would a man of your age be without some kind of career?  A mere purposeless wanderer on the face of the earth.  Stick to business, dear old fellow.  Believe me, there is nothing like work to make a man forget any foolish trouble of this kind.  And you will forget it, Gilbert, be assured of that.  If I were not certain it would be so, I should——­”

He stopped suddenly, staring absently at the fire with a darkening brow.

“You would do what, John?”

“Hate this man Holbrook almost as savagely as you hate him, for having come between you and your happiness.  Yet, if Marian Nowell did not love you—­as a wife should love her husband, with all her heart and soul—­it was ten thousand times better that the knot should be cut in time, however roughly.  Think what your misery would have been if you had discovered after your marriage that her heart had never been really yours.”

“I cannot imagine that possible.  I have no shadow of doubt that I should have succeeded in winning her heart if this man had not robbed me of her.  My absence gave him his opportunity.  Had I been at hand to protect my own interests, I do not think his influence could have prevailed against me.”

“It is quite natural that you should think that,” John Saltram said gravely.  “Yet you may be mistaken.  A woman’s love is such a capricious thing, and so often bestowed upon the least deserving amongst those who seek it.”

After this they were silent for some time, and then Gilbert told his friend about his acquaintance with Jacob Nowell, and the old man’s futile endeavours to find his grandchild; to all of which Mr. Saltram listened attentively.