Part 6 (1/2)

'But why?'

'It's one of the essentials of success in any kind of public life. And I mean to succeed, you know. I feel that I am one of the men who do succeed. But I beg your pardon; you asked me a question. Really, I was only going to say of Reardon what I had said before: that he hasn't the tact requisite for acquiring popularity.'

'Then I may hope that it isn't his marriage with my cousin which has proved a fatal misfortune?'

'In no case,' replied Milvain, averting his look, 'would he have used his advantages.'

'And now? Do you think he has but poor prospects?'

'I wish I could see any chance of his being estimated at his right value. It's very hard to say what is before him.'

'I knew my cousin Amy when we were children,' said Marian, presently.

'She gave promise of beauty.'

'Yes, she is beautiful.'

'And--the kind of woman to be of help to such a husband?'

'I hardly know how to answer, Miss Yule,' said Jasper, looking frankly at her. 'Perhaps I had better say that it's unfortunate they are poor.'

Marian cast down her eyes.

'To whom isn't it a misfortune?' pursued her companion. 'Poverty is the root of all social ills; its existence accounts even for the ills that arise from wealth. The poor man is a man labouring in fetters. I declare there is no word in our language which sounds so hideous to me as ”Poverty.”'

Shortly after this they came to the bridge over the railway line. Jasper looked at his watch.

'Will you indulge me in a piece of childishness?' he said. 'In less than five minutes a London express goes by; I have often watched it here, and it amuses me. Would it weary you to wait?'

'I should like to,' she replied with a laugh.

The line ran along a deep cutting, from either side of which grew hazel bushes and a few larger trees. Leaning upon the parapet of the bridge, Jasper kept his eye in the westward direction, where the gleaming rails were visible for more than a mile. Suddenly he raised his finger.

'You hear?'

Marian had just caught the far-off sound of the train. She looked eagerly, and in a few moments saw it approaching. The front of the engine blackened nearer and nearer, coming on with dread force and speed. A blinding rush, and there burst against the bridge a great volley of sunlit steam. Milvain and his companion ran to the opposite parapet, but already the whole train had emerged, and in a few seconds it had disappeared round a sharp curve. The leafy branches that grew out over the line swayed violently backwards and forwards in the perturbed air.

'If I were ten years younger,' said Jasper, laughing, 'I should say that was jolly! It enspirits me. It makes me feel eager to go back and plunge into the fight again.'

'Upon me it has just the opposite effect,' fell from Marian, in very low tones.

'Oh, don't say that! Well, it only means that you haven't had enough holiday yet. I have been in the country more than a week; a few days more and I must be off. How long do you think of staying?'

'Not much more than a week, I think.'

'By-the-bye, you are coming to have tea with us to-morrow,' Jasper remarked a propos of nothing. Then he returned to another subject that was in his thoughts.

'It was by a train like that that I first went up to London. Not really the first time; I mean when I went to live there, seven years ago.

What spirits I was in! A boy of eighteen going to live independently in London; think of it!'

'You went straight from school?'