ominous questions; such, for instance, as—­What necessity was he under to maintain the appearance of a cheerful domesticity?  If things got just a trifle more unbearable, why should he not make for himself somewhere else a new home?  He was, it is true, startled at his own audacity, and only some strangely powerful concurrence of motives—­such as he was yet to know—­could in reality have made him reckless.  For the other features of his character, those which tended to stability, were still strong enough to oppose passions which had not found the occasion for their full development.  He was not exactly avaricious, but pursuit of money was in him an hereditary instinct.  By mere force of habit he stuck zealously to his business, and, without thinking much about his wealth, disliked unusual expenditure.  His wife had taunted him with meanness, with low money-grubbing; the effect had been to make him all the more tenacious of habits which might have given way before other kinds of reproof.  So he had gone on living the ordinary life, to all appearances well contented, in reality troubled from time to time by a reawakening of those desires which he had understood only to have them frustrated.  He groped in a dim way after things which, by chance perceived, seemed to have a certain bearing on his life.  The discovery in himself of an interest in architecture was an instance; but for his visit to the Continent he might never have been led to think of the subject.  Then there was his fondness for the moors and mountains, the lochs and islands, of the north.  On the whole, he preferred to travel in Scotland by himself; the scenery appealed to a poetry that was in him, if only he could have brought it into consciousness.  Already he had planned for the present August a tour among the Hebrides, and had made it out with his maps and guidebooks, not without careful consideration of expense.  Why did he linger beyond the day on which he had decided to set forth?

For several days it had been noticed at the mill that he lacked something of his wonted attention in matters of business.  Certainly his occupation about eleven o’clock one morning had little apparent bearing on the concerns of his office; he was standing at the window of his private room, which was on the first floor of the mill, with a large field-glass at his eyes.  The glass was focussed upon the Cartwrights’ garden, in which sat Jessie with Emily Hood.  They were but a short distance away, and Dagworthy could observe them closely; he had done so, intermittently, for almost an hour, and this was the second morning that he had thus amused himself.  Yet, to judge from his face, when he turned away, amusement was hardly his state of mind; his features had a hard-set earnestness, an expression almost savage.  And then he walked about the little room, regarding objects absently.