Everybody liked John Corlear Delancy, and this in spite of himself, for no one ever knew him to make any effort to incur either love or hate.  The handsome boy was a favorite without lifting his eyebrows, and he sauntered through the university, picking his easy way along an elective course, winning the affectionate regard of every one with whom he came in contact.  And this was not because he lacked quality, or was merely easy-going and negative or effeminate, for the same thing happened to him when he went shooting in the summer in the Rockies.  The cowboys and the severe moralists of the plains, whose sedate business in life is to get the drop on offensive persons, regarded him as a brother.  It isn’t a bad test of personal quality, this power to win the loyalty of men who have few or none of the conventional virtues.  These non-moral enforcers of justice—­as they understood it liked Jack exactly as his friends in the New York clubs liked him—­and perhaps the moral standard of approval of the one was as good as the other.

Jack was a very good shot and a fair rider, and in the climate of England he might have taken first-rate rank in athletics.  But he had never taken first-rate rank in anything, except good-fellowship.  He had a great many expensive tastes, which he could not afford to indulge, except in imagination.  The luxury of a racing-stable, or a yacht, or a library of scarce books bound by Paris craftsmen was denied him.  Those who account for failures in life by a man’s circumstances, and not by a lack in the man himself, which is always the secret of failure, said that Jack was unfortunate in coming into a certain income of twenty thousand a year.  This was just enough to paralyze effort, and not enough to permit a man to expand in any direction.  It is true that he was related to millions and moved in a millionaire atmosphere, but these millions might never flow into his bank account.  They were not in hand to use, and they also helped to paralyze effort—­like black clouds of an impending shower that may pass around, but meantime keeps the watcher indoors.

The best thing that Jack Delancy ever did, for himself, was to marry Edith Fletcher.  The wedding, which took place some eight months before the advent of the Spanish dancer, was a surprise to many, for the girl had even less fortune than Jack, and though in and of his society entirely, was supposed to have ideals.  Her family, indeed, was an old one on the island, and was prominent long before the building of the stone bridge on Canal Street over the outlet of Collect Pond.  Those who knew Edith well detected in her that strain of moral earnestness which made the old Fletchers such stanch and trusty citizens.  The wonder was not that Jack, with his easy susceptibility to refined beauty, should have been attracted to her, or have responded to a true instinct of what was best for him, but that Edith should have taken up with such a perfect type of the aimlessness of the society strata