“I don’t know,” Abraham replied indifferently.  “I should think it will suit him as well as anything else.”

“But he is clever; he writes books.  Don’t you think he will make himself known some day?”

“That kind of thing isn’t much to be depended on, it seems to me.  It’s a doubtful business to look forward to for a living.”

Ida kept silence on the subject after that.  She did not seem to brood any longer over sad thoughts, yet it was seldom she behaved or spoke light-heartedly; her face often indicated an absent mind, but it was the calm musing of one whose thoughts look to the future and strengthen themselves with hope.  Times there were when she drew away into solitude, and these were the intervals of doubt and self-questioning.  With her grandfather she was reconciled; she had become convinced of his kindness to her, and the far-off past was now seldom in her mind.  The trouble originated in the deepest workings of her nature.  When she found herself comparing her position now with that of former days, it excited in her a restive mood to think that chance alone had thus raised her out of misery, that the conscious strength and purity of her soul would never have availed to help her to the things which were now within her grasp.  The old sense of the world’s injustice excited anger and revolt in her heart.  Chance, chance alone befriended her, and the reflection injured her pride.  What of those numberless struggling creatures to whom such happy fortune could never come, who, be their aspirations and capabilities what they might, must struggle vainly, agonise, and in the end despair?  She had been lifted out of hell, not risen therefrom by her own strength.  Sometimes it half seemed to her that it would have been the nobler lot to remain as she was, to share the misery of that dread realm of darkness with those poor disinherited ones, to cherish that spirit of noble rebellion, the consciousness of which had been as a pure fire on the altar of her being.  What was to be her future?  Would she insensibly forget her past self, let her strength subside in refinement—­it might be, even lose the passion which had made her what she was?

But hope predominated.  Forget!  Could she ever forget those faces in the slums on the day when she bade farewell to poverty and all its attendant wretchedness?  Litany Lane and Elm Court were names which already symbolised a purpose.  If ever she still looked at her grandfather with a remnant of distrust, it was because she thought of him as drawing money from such a source, enjoying his life of ease in disregard of the responsibilities laid upon him.  The day would come when she could find courage to speak to him.  She waited and prepared herself.