“It was so good of you to telegraph me before I could see the newspaper.”

“Of course I knew the account would be greatly exaggerated;” and he made light of the whole affair, knowing that the facts would still be capable of shocking her, giving a comic picture of the Major’s seafaring qualities, and Carmen’s and Miss Tavish’s chaff of the gallant old beau.

Even with this light sketching of the event she could not avoid a retrospective pang of apprehension, and the tightened grasp of his hand was as if she were holding him fast from that and all other peril.

The days went by in content, on the whole, shaded a little by anxiety and made grave by a new interest.  It could not well be but that the prospect of the near future, with its increase of responsibility, should create a little uneasiness in Jack’s mind as to his own career.  Of this future they talked much, and in Jack’s attitude towards her Edith saw, for the first time since her marriage, a lever of suggestion, and it came naturally in the contemplation of their future life that she should encourage his discontent at having no occupation.  Facing, in this waiting-time of quiet, certain responsibilities, it was impressed upon him that the collecting of bric-a-brac was scarcely an occupation, and that idling in clubs and studios and dangling about at the beck of society women was scarcely a career that could save him from ultimate ennui.  To be sure, he had plenty of comrades, young fellows of fortune, who never intended to do anything except to use it for their personal satisfaction; but they did not seem to be of much account except in the little circle that they ornamented.  Speaking of one of them one day, Father Damon had said that it seemed a pity a fellow of such family and capacity and fortune should go to the devil merely for the lack of an object in life.  In this closer communion with Edith, whose ideas he began to comprehend, Jack dimly apprehended this view, and for the moment impulsively accepted it.

“I’m half sorry,” he said one day, “that I didn’t go in for a profession.  But it is late now.  Law, medicine, engineering, architecture, would take years of study.”

“There was Armstrong,” Edith suggested, “who studied law after he was married.”

“But it looks sort of silly for a fellow who has a wife to go to school, unless,” said Jack, with a laugh, “he goes to school to his wife.  Then there’s politics.  You wouldn’t like to see me in that.”

“I rather think, Jack”—­she spoke musingly—­“if I were a man I should go into politics.”

“You would have nice company!”

“But it’s the noblest career—­government, legislation, trying to do something to make the world better.  Jack, I don’t see how the men of New York can stand it to be governed by the very worst elements.”

“My dear, you have no idea what practical politics is.”

“I’ve an idea what I’d make it.  What is the good of young men of leisure if they don’t do anything for the country?  Too fine to do what Hamilton did and Jay did!  I wish you could have heard my father talk about it.  Abdicate their birthright for a four-in-hand!”