To do Jack justice, this enforced detention in the country he did not find dull exactly.  To be sure it was vacation-time, and his whole life was a vacation, and summer was rather more difficult to dispose of than winter, for one had to make more of an effort to amuse himself.  But Edith was never more charming than in this new dependence, and all his love and loyalty were evoked in caring for her.  This was occupation enough, even if he had been the busiest man in the world-to watch over her, to read to her, to anticipate her fancies, to live with her in that dream of the future which made life seem almost ideal.  There came a time when he looked back upon this month at the Golden House as the happiest in his life.

The talk about an occupation was not again referred to.  Edith seemed entirely happy to have Jack with her, more entirely her own than he had ever been, and to have him just as he was.  And yet he knew, by a sure instinct, that she saw him as she thought he would be, with some aim and purpose in life.  And he made many good resolutions.

That which was nearest him attracted him most, and very feeble now were the allurements of the life and the company he had just left.  Not that he would break with it exactly; it was not necessary to do that; but he would find something to do, something worth a man’s doing, or, at any rate, some occupation that should tax his time and his energies.  That, he knew, would make Edith happy, and to make her happy seemed now very much like a worthy object in life.  She was so magnanimous, so unsuspicious, so full of all nobility.  He knew she would stand by him whatever happened.  Down here her attitude to life was no longer a rebuke to him nor a restraint upon him.  Everything seemed natural and wholesome.  Perhaps his vanity was touched, for there must be something in, him if such a woman could love him.  And probably there was, though he himself had never yet had a chance to find it out.  Brought up in the expectation of a fortune, bred to idleness as others are to industry, his highest ambition having been to amuse himself creditably and to take life easily, what was to hinder his being one of the multitude of “good-for-nothings” in our modern life?  If there had been war, he had spirit enough to carry him into it, and it would have surprised no one to hear that Jack had joined an exploring expedition to the North Pole or the highlands of Central Asia.  Something uncommon he might do if opportunity offered.

About his operations with Henderson he had never told Edith, and he did not tell her now.  Perhaps she divined it, and he rather wondered that she had never asked him about his increased expenditures, his yacht, and all that.  He used to look at her steadily at times, as if he were trying to read the secrets of her heart.

“What are you looking at, Jack?”

“To see if I can find out how much you know, you look so wise.”

“Do I?  I was just thinking about you.  I suppose that made me look so.”