ng man, as
he reflected upon matters recalled to his mind by his impending
arrival. They were matters he had thought of with gradually increasing
seriousness for some months, and they had, at first, been the result of
the letters from Stornham, which each "steamer day" brought. They had
been of immense interest to him--these letters. He would have found them
absorbing as a study, even if he had not deeply loved Betty. He read in
them things she did not state in words, and they set him thinking.

He was not suspected by men like himself of concealing an imagination
beneath the trained steadiness of his exterior, but he possessed more
than the world knew, and it singularly combined itself with powers of
logical deduction.

If he had been with his daughter, he would have seen, day by day, where
her thoughts were leading her, and in what direction she was developing,
but, at a distance of three thousand miles, he found himself asking
questions, and endeavouring to reach conclusions. His affection for
Betty was the central emotion of his existence. He had never told
himself that he had outgrown the kind and pretty creature he had married
in his early youth, and certainly his tender care for her and pleasure
in her simple goodness had never wavered, but Betty had given him a
companionship which had counted greatly in the sum of his happiness.
Because imagination was not suspected in him, no one knew what she stood
for in his life. He had no son; he stood at the head of a great
house, so to speak--the American parallel of what a great house is in
non-republican countries. The power of it counted for great things, not
in America alone, but throughout the world. As international intimacies
increased, the influence of such houses might end in aiding in the
making of history. Enormous constantly increasing wealth and huge
financial schemes could not confine their influence, but must reach far.
The man whose hand held the lever controlling them was doing well when
he thought of them gravely. Such a man had to do with more than his own
mere life and living. This man had confronted many problems as the years
had passed. He had seen men like himself die, leaving behind them the
force they had controlled, and he had seen this force--controlled no
longer--let loose upon the world, sometimes a power of evil, sometimes
scattering itself aimlessly into nothingness and folly, which wrought
harm. He was not an ambitious man, but--perhaps be