who came to reign over
Breysgate and to dispose of those millions of money. We had both, I
think, been touched with a certain romantic, or pathetic, element in the
situation. We had not talked about it, much less had we talked about
what we felt ourselves or about what we meant to do; but it had grown
into a tacit understanding between us that more than our mere paid
services were due from us to Jenny Driver. No man had been very near her
father, but we had been nearest; we did not mean that his daughter
should be without friends if she would accept friendship. Nay, I think
we meant a little more than that. She was young and ignorant; Nick
Driver's daughter might well be willful and imperious. We meant that she
should not easily escape our service and our friendship; they should be
more than offered; they should be pressed; if need be, they should be
secretly given. It had been an honest idea of ours--but it seemed hard
to work in practice. Such service as I could give was ended well-nigh
before it had begun. I thought it only too likely that Cartmell's also
would soon end, save, at least, for strictly professional purposes. And
I could not see how this end was to be avoided in his case any more than
it had been found possible to avoid it in mine. With the best will in
the world, there were limits. "Some things are impossible to some men,"
old Mr. Driver had said in that letter; it had been impossible to me--as
it would, I think, have been to most men--to see Powers welcomed by her
as a gentleman and a friend.

Yet I began almost to be sorry--almost to ask why I had not swallowed
Powers and accepted the invitation to dinner. Might I, in that way, have
had a better chance of getting rid of Powers in the end? It would have
been a wrong thing to do--I was still quite clear about that--wrong in
every way, and very disgusting, to boot; quite fatal to my self-respect,
and an acquiescence in a horrible want of self-respect in Jenny. But I
might have been useful to her. Now I could be of no use. That evening I
first set my feet on what I may perhaps call a moral slope. It looked a
very gentle slope; there did not appear to be any danger in it; it did
not look as though you could slip on it or as if it would be difficult
to recover yourself if slip you did. But, in fact, at the bottom of that
moral slope--which grew steeper as it descended--lay a moral precipice.
Nothing less can I call the conclusion that anything which might be