e had
somewhat against her; for she had twice played him this trick--first as
regarded herself, and then as regarded her fortune. That she had not
been altogether to blame--that she had deluded herself in both cases as
effectually as she had deluded him--was no consolation as far as he was
concerned; his egoism took no account of her motives--it only resented
the results. Quenelda did all in her power to comfort him, but she
found it uphill work. She gave him love in full measure; but, as it
happened, money and not love was the thing he most wanted, and that was
not hers to bestow. He still cared for her more than he cared for
anybody (though not for anything) else in the world; it was not that he
loved Caesar less but Rome more, Cecil's being one of the natures to whom
Rome would always appeal more powerfully than Caesar. His life did
consist in the things which he had; and, when these failed, nothing else
could make up to him for them. Neither Christopher nor Elisabeth was
capable of understanding how much mere money meant to Farquhar; they had
no conception of how bitter was his disappointment on knowing that he
was not, after all, the lost heir to the Farringdon property. And who
would blame them for this? Does one blame a man, who takes a dirty bone
away from a dog, for not entering into the dog's feelings on the matter?
Nevertheless, that bone is to the dog what fame is to the poet and glory
to the soldier. One can but enjoy and suffer according to one's nature.

It happened, by an odd coincidence, that the mystery of Cecil's
parentage was cleared up shortly after Elisabeth's false alarm on that
score; and his paternal grandfather was discovered in the shape of a
retired shopkeeper at Surbiton of the name of Biggs, who had been cursed
with an unsatisfactory son. When in due time this worthy man was
gathered to his fathers, he left a comfortable little fortune to his
long-lost grandson; whereupon Cecil married Quenelda, and continued to
make art his profession, while his recreation took the form of
believing--and retailing his belief to anybody who had time and patience
to listen to it--that the Farringdons of Sedgehill had, by foul means,
ousted him from his rightful position, and that, but for their
dishonesty, he would have been one of the richest men in Mershire. And
this grievance--as is the way of grievances--never failed to be a source
of unlimited pleasure and comfort to Cecil Farquhar.

But in the meantim