He entered the house, and having told Mrs. Jobson that she could go to bed, sat down to smoke and think.  Harold Quaritch, like many solitary men, was a great smoker, and never did he feel the need for the consolation of tobacco more than on this night.  A few months ago, when he had retired from the army, he found himself in a great dilemma.  There he was, a hale, active man of three-and-forty, of busy habits, and regular mind, suddenly thrown upon the world without occupation.  What was he to do with himself?  While he was asking this question and waiting blankly for an answer which did not come, his aunt, old Mrs. Massey, departed this life, leaving him heir to what she possessed, which might be three hundred a year in all.  This, added to his pension and the little that he owned independently, put him beyond the necessity of seeking further employment.  So he had made up his mind to come to reside at Molehill, and live the quiet, somewhat aimless, life of a small country gentleman.  His reading, for he was a great reader, especially of scientific works, would, he thought, keep him employed.  Moreover, he was a thorough sportsman, and an ardent, though owing to the smallness of his means, necessarily not a very extensive, collector of curiosities, and more particularly of coins.

At first, after he had come to his decision, a feeling of infinite rest and satisfaction had taken possession of him.  The struggle of life was over for him.  No longer would he be obliged to think, and contrive, and toil; henceforth his days would slope gently down towards the inevitable end.  Trouble lay in the past, now rest and rest alone awaited him, rest that would gradually grow deeper and deeper as the swift years rolled by, till it was swallowed up in that almighty Peace to which, being a simple and religious man, he had looked forward from childhood as the end and object of his life.

Foolish man and vain imagining!  Here, while we draw breath, there is no rest.  We must go on continually, on from strength to strength, or weakness to weakness; we must always be troubled about this or that, and must ever have this desire or that to regret.  It is an inevitable law within whose attraction all must fall; yes, even the purest souls, cradled in their hope of heaven; and the most swinish, wallowing in the mud of their gratified desires.

And so our hero had already begun to find out.  Here, before he had been forty-eight hours in Honham, a fresh cause of troubles had arisen.  He had seen Ida de la Molle again, and after an interval of between five and six years had found her face yet more charming than it was before.  In short he had fallen in love with it, and being a sensible man he did not conceal this fact from himself.  Indeed the truth was that he had been in love with her for all these years, though he had never looked at the matter in that light.  At the least the pile had been gathered and laid, and did but require a touch of the match to burn up merrily enough.  And now this was supplied, and at the first glance of Ida’s eyes the magic flame began to hiss and crackle, and he knew that nothing short of a convulsion or a deluge would put it out.