He took up the tongs, and began absently to rebuild the fire.  Victoria waited on his remarks with heightened colour.

“Of course I’m sorry for Harry,” he said, after a moment, with his queer smile.  “I saw there was something wrong when I arrived.  But it’s salutary—­very salutary!  Hasn’t he had everything in the world he wanted from his cradle?  And isn’t it as certain as anything can be that he’ll find some other charming girl, who’ll faint with joy, when he asks her, and give you all the grandchildren you want?  And meanwhile we have this bit of the heroic—­this defiance of a miry world, cropping up—­to help us out of our mud-holes.  I’m awfully sorry for Harry—­but I take off my hat to the girl.”

Victoria’s expression became sarcastic.

“Who will ultimately marry,” she said, “according to my interpretation of the business, a first-class adventurer—­possessed of a million of money—­stolen from its proper owners.”

“I don’t believe it.  I’ve seen her!  But, upon my word, what a queer parable it all is!  Shall I tell you how it shapes itself to me?” He looked, tongs in hand, at Victoria, his greenish eyes all alive.  “I see you all—­you, Harry, Faversham, and Melrose, Miss Lydia—­grouped round a central point.  The point is wealth.  You are all in different relations to wealth.  You and Harry are indifferent to wealth, because you have always had it.  It has come to you without toiling and spinning—­can you imagine being without it?—­but it has not spoilt you.  You sit loose to it; because you have never struggled for it.  But I doubt whether the Recording Angel, when it comes to reckoning up, will give you very high marks for your indifference!  Dear friend!”—­he put out a sudden hand and touched Victoria’s—­“bear with me!  There’s one thing you’ll hear, if any one does, at the last day—­’I was a stranger and ye took me in.’” His eyes shone upon her.

After which, he resumed in his former tone:  “Then take Melrose.  He too is determined by his relation to wealth.  Wealth has just ruined him—­burnt him up—­made out of him so much refuse for the nether fires.  Faversham again!  Wealth, the crucial, deciding factor!  The testing with him is still going on.  He seems, from your account, to be coming out badly.  And lastly, the girl—­who, like you, is indifferent to wealth, but for different reasons; who probably hates and shrinks from it; like a wild bird that fears the cage.  You, my dear lady—­you and Harry—­have got so used to wealth, its trammels no longer gall you.  You carry the weight of it, as the horse of the Middle Ages carried his trappings; it’s second nature.  And you can enjoy, you can move, you can feel, in spite of it.  You have risked your soul, without knowing it; but you have kept your soul!  This girl, I take it, is afraid to risk her soul.  She is not in love with Harry—­worse luck for Harry!—­she is in love—­remember I have talked to her a little!—­with something she calls beauty,