Jasmine studied him as an artist would study a picture, and decided that he had elements of the unusual, and was a distinct personality.  Though rugged, he was not uncouth, and there was nothing of the nouveau riche about him.  He did not wear a ring or scarf-pin, his watch-chain was simple and inconspicuous enough for a school-boy—­and he was worth three million pounds, with a palace building in Park Lane and a feudal castle in Wales leased for a period of years.  There was nothing greatly striking in his carriage; indeed, he did not make enough of his height and bulk; but his eye was strong and clear, his head was powerful, and his quick smile was very winning.  Yet—­yet, he was not the type of man who, to her mind should have made three millions at thirty-three.  It did not seem to her that he was really representative of the great fortune-builders—­she had her grandfather and others closely in mind.  She had seen many captains of industry and finance in her grandfather’s house, men mostly silent, deliberate and taciturn, and showing in their manner and persons the accumulated habits of patience, force, ceaseless aggression and domination.

Was it only luck which had given Rudyard Byng those three millions?  It could not be just that alone.  She remembered her grandfather used to say that luck was a powerful ingredient in the successful career of every man, but that the man was on the spot to take the luck, knew when to take it, and how to use it.  “The lucky man is the man that sits up watching for the windfall while other men are sleeping”—­that was the way he had put it.  So Rudyard Byng, if lucky, had also been of those who had grown haggard with watching, working and waiting; but not a hair of his head had whitened, and if he looked older than he was, still he was young enough to marry the youngest debutante in England and the prettiest and best-born.  He certainly had inherent breeding.  His family had a long pedigree, and every man could not be as distinguished-looking as Ian Stafford—­as Ian Stafford, who, however, had not three millions of pounds; who had not yet made his name and might never do so.

She flushed with anger at herself that she should be so disloyal to Ian, for whom she had pictured a brilliant future—­ambassador at Paris or Berlin, or, if he chose, Foreign Minister in Whitehall—­Ian, gracious, diligent, wonderfully trained, waiting, watching for his luck and ready to take it; and to carry success, when it came, like a prince of princelier days.  Ian gratified every sense in her, met every demand of an exacting nature, satisfied her unusually critical instinct, and was, in effect, her affianced husband.  Yet it was so hard to wait for luck, for place, for power, for the environment where she could do great things, could fill that radiant place which her cynical and melodramatic but powerful and sympathetic grandfather had prefigured for her.  She had been the apple of that old man’s eye, and he had filled her