essful in his wooing and his ward's forty thousand
pounds be thrown into the scale, the firm would shake itself clear from
the load which oppressed it. Supposing, however, that Kate were to
refuse his son. What was to occur then? The will was so worded that
there appeared to be no other way of obtaining the money. A very
vulpine look would come over the old man's face as he brooded over that
problem.

The strangest of all the phenomena, however, presented by John
Girdlestone at this period of his life was his own entire conviction of
the righteousness of his actions. When every night and morning he sank
upon his knees with his household and prayed for the success of the
firm's undertakings, no qualms of conscience ever troubled him as to
their intrinsic morality. On Sundays the grey head of the merchant in
the first pew was as constant an object as was the pew itself, yet in
that head no thought ever rose of the inconsistency of his religion and
of his practice. For fifty years he had been persuading himself that he
was a righteous man, and the conviction was now so firmly impressed upon
his very soul that nothing could ever shake it. Ezra was wrong when he
set this down as deliberate hypocrisy. Blind strength of will and
self-conceit were at the bottom of his actions, but he would have been
astonished and indignant had he been accused of simulating piety or of
using it as a tool. To him the firm of Girdlestone was the very
representation of religion in the commercial world, and as such must be
upheld by every conceivable means.

To his son this state of mind was unintelligible, and he simply gave his
father credit for being a consummate and accomplished hypocrite, who
found a mantle of piety a very convenient one under which to conceal his
real character. He had himself inherited the old man's dogged
pertinacity and commercial instincts, and was by nature unscrupulous and
impatient of any obstacle placed in his way. He was now keenly alive to
the fact that the existence of the firm depended upon the success of his
suit, and he knew also how lucrative a concern the African business
would prove were it set upon its legs again. He had determined in case
he succeeded to put his father aside as a sleeping partner and to take
the reins of management entirely into his own hands. His practical mind
had already devised countless ways in which the profits might be
increased. The first step of all, then, was the g