, which is the most difficult. He had
cultivated friends, not a mob of acquaintances, although as people say
he "knew everybody," as a man who had attained his position and won his
success could scarcely fail to do. He had succeeded indeed, not in the
fabulous way that some men do, but in a way which most men in his
profession looked upon as in the highest degree satisfactory. He had a
silk gown like any dowager. He had been leading counsel in many cases
which were now of note. He was among, not the two or three perhaps, but
the twenty or thirty, who were at the head of his profession. If he had
not gone further it was perhaps more from lack of ambition than from
want of power. He had been for years in Parliament, but preferred his
independence to the chance of office. It is impossible to tell how
John's character and wishes might have been modified had he married and
had children round him like other men. Had the tall boy in the north,
the young hero of Lakeside, been his, what a difference would that
have made in his views of life! But Philip was not his, nor Philip's
mother--probably, as he always said to himself, from his own fault.
This, as the reader is aware, had always been fully recognised by John
himself. Perhaps in the old days, in those days when everything was
possible, he had not even recognised that there was but one woman in
the world whom he could ever wish to marry. Probably it was only
her appropriation by another that revealed this fact to him. There
are men like this to be found everywhere; not so hotly constituted
as to seize for themselves what is most necessary for their personal
happiness--possessed by so many other subjects that this seems a thing
to be thought of by-and-by--which by-and-by is generally too late.

But John Tatham was neither a disappointed nor an unhappy man. He might
have attained a higher development and more brilliant and full life, but
that was all; and how few men are there of whom this could not be said!
He had become Mr. Tatham of Tatham's Cross, as well as Q.C. and M.P.,
a county gentleman of modest but effective standing, a lawyer of high
reputation, quite eligible either for the bench or for political
elevation, had he cared for either, a member of Parliament with a
distinct standing, and therefore importance of his own. There was
probably throughout England no society in which he could have found
himself where his position and importance would have been unknown. He
w