umulated a considerable fortune in
the exercise of this industry. Caspar at present managed the works, and
with a judgement and a temper which, in spite of keen competition and
languid years, had kept their prosperity from dwindling. He had received
the better part of his education at Harvard College, where, however, he
had gained renown rather as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a gleaner
of more dispersed knowledge. Later on he had learned that the finer
intelligence too could vault and pull and strain--might even, breaking
the record, treat itself to rare exploits. He had thus discovered in
himself a sharp eye for the mystery of mechanics, and had invented an
improvement in the cotton-spinning process which was now largely used
and was known by his name. You might have seen it in the newspapers in
connection with this fruitful contrivance; assurance of which he
had given to Isabel by showing her in the columns of the New York
Interviewer an exhaustive article on the Goodwood patent--an article not
prepared by Miss Stackpole, friendly as she had proved herself to his
more sentimental interests. There were intricate, bristling things he
rejoiced in; he liked to organise, to contend, to administer; he could
make people work his will, believe in him, march before him and justify
him. This was the art, as they said, of managing men--which rested, in
him, further, on a bold though brooding ambition. It struck those
who knew him well that he might do greater things than carry on a
cotton-factory; there was nothing cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and
his friends took for granted that he would somehow and somewhere
write himself in bigger letters. But it was as if something large and
confused, something dark and ugly, would have to call upon him: he was
not after all in harmony with mere smug peace and greed and gain, an
order of things of which the vital breath was ubiquitous advertisement.
It pleased Isabel to believe that he might have ridden, on a plunging
steed, the whirlwind of a great war--a war like the Civil strife that
had overdarkened her conscious childhood and his ripening youth.

She liked at any rate this idea of his being by character and in fact a
mover of men--liked it much better than some other points in his nature
and aspect. She cared nothing for his cotton-mill--the Goodwood patent
left her imagination absolutely cold. She wished him no ounce less of
his manhood, but she sometimes thought he would be rath