taking it easy in my profession if you're to do your duty by your clients—but, yes, I shall be happy to wait for you."
Then, left alone in the still, clear cold, he became absorbed in thought again.
When Joseph Challoner, the elder, settled at Stourmouth in the early sixties of the last century, that famous health-resort had consisted of a single street of small shops, stationed along a level space about half a mile up the fir and pine clad valley from the sea, plus some dozen unattractive lodging-houses perched on the top of the West Cliff. The beginnings of business had been meager. Now Stourmouth and the outlying residential districts to which it acts as center—among them the great stretch of pine-land known as the Baughurst Park Estate—covers the whole thirteen miles, in an almost unbroken series of shops, boarding-houses, hotels, villas, and places of amusement, from the ancient abbey-town of Marychurch at the junction of the rivers Wilmer and Arn, on the east, to Barryport, the old sea-faring town, formerly of somewhat sinister reputation, set beside a wide, shallow, island-dotted, land-locked harbor to the west. Along with the development of Stourmouth the elder Challoner's fortunes developed. So that when, as an old man, he died in the last of the eighties, his son, the younger Joseph, succeeded to a by no means contemptible patrimony.
As business increased other members came into the firm, which now figured as that of Challoner, Greatrex & Pewsey. But, and that not in virtue of his senior partnership alone, Joseph Challoner's interest remained the largely predominant one. He was indefatigable, quick to spot a good thing, and, so some said, more clever than scrupulous in his pursuit of it. He came to possess the reputation of a man who it is safer to have for your friend than your enemy. So much for the hard side of his character.
As to the sentimental side. When a youth of twenty he had fallen head over ears in love with the daughter of a local retail chemist, a pretty, delicate girl, with the marks of phthisis already upon her. She brought him a few hundred pounds. They married. And he was quite a good husband to her—as English husbands go. Still this marriage had been, he came to see, a mistake. The money, after all, was but a modest sum, while her ill-health proved decidedly costly. And then he had grown to know more of the world, grown harder and stronger, grown to perceive among other things that connection with a shop is a handicap. The smell of it sticks. There's no ridding yourself of it. Joseph Challoner may be acquitted of being more addicted to peerage or money worship, to being a greater snob, in short, than the average self-respecting Anglo-Saxon; yet it would be idle to deny that when an all-wise and merciful providence permitted his poor, pretty young wife—after several unsuccessful attempts at the production of infant Challoners—to die of consumption, her husband felt there were compensations. He recognized her death as a call, socially speaking, to come up higher. He set himself to obey that call, but he did not hurry. For close upon thirteen years now, though of an amorous and domestic disposition, he had remained a widower. And this of set purpose, for he proposed that the last whiff of the shop should have time to evaporate. By the period immediately in question he had reason to believe it really had done so. Privately he expended a considerable sum in procuring his father-in-law a promising business near London. Stourmouth knew that retail chemist no more. And so it followed that the dead wife's compromising origin was, practically, forgotten; only admiration of the constancy of the bereaved husband remained. To complete the divorce between past and present, Challoner, some few years previously, had let the "upper part" over the firm's offices, at the corner where the Old Marychurch Road opens upon the public gardens and The Square in the center of Stourmouth, to his junior partner, Mr. Pewsey, and removed to Heatherleigh, a fair-sized villa on the Baughurst Park Estate, which he bought at bargain price owing to the insolvency of its owner. Here, with a married couple at the head of his household, as butler and cook-housekeeper, he lived in solid British comfort—so-called—giving tea and tennis parties at intervals during the summer months, and somewhat heavy dinners during the winter ones, followed by bridge and billiards.
Granted the man and his natural tendencies, it was impossible that the thirteen years which had elapsed since the death of his wife should have been altogether free from sentimental complications. These had, in point of fact, been numerous. Upon several of them he could not look back with self-congratulation. Still the main thing was that he had escaped, always managing to sheer off in time to avoid being "had," being run down and legally appropriated. The retreat may not have been graceful, might not, to a scrupulous conscience, even figure as strictly honorable, but it had been accomplished. And for that—standing here, now, to-day, on the snow-powdered carriage sweep of the Tower House—with a movement of unsuspected cynicism and profanity he gave thanks, sober, heartfelt, deliberate thanks to God his Maker. For his chance had come, the chance of a lifetime! He turned fiercely, grimly angry at the bare notion that any turn of events might have rendered him not free to embrace it. And his anger, as anger will, fixed itself vindictively upon a concrete object, upon a particular person.
But, at this point, his meditations were broken in upon by the sound of Colonel Haig's slightly patronizing speech and the ring of his brisk returning footsteps over the hard gravel.
"Very obliging of you to wait for me, Challoner," he said. "There are several things which I should be glad to hear, in confidence, about all this matter. Since their father's death I feel a certain responsibility toward the Miss Smyrthwaites. They have only acquaintances here in the south of England—no old friends, no relatives. I really stand nearest to them, though we are but distantly connected."
"I was not aware of even a distant connection," Challoner returned.
"Probably not. I suppose hardly any one here is aware of it. In a watering-place like Stourmouth, a place that has come up like a mushroom in a night, as you may say, only a very small and exclusive circle do know who is who. That is one of the things one has to put up with, though I confess I find it annoying at times. Well, you see, my grandmother and poor Smyrthwaite's mother were first cousins once removed—both Savages, the Yorkshire, not the Irish, branch of the family. I have reason to believe there was a good deal of opposition to Mrs. Smyrthwaite's marriage. She was not a Roman Catholic, like most of her people. But they all were—and all are, I am thankful to say—people of very solid standing, landed gentry, soldiers, and so on. Naturally they objected to a marriage with a manufacturer and a Non-conformist. I am quite prepared to admit Unitarians have more breeding than most dissenters, but still it isn't pleasant, it isn't quite the thing, you know. Prejudice? Perhaps. But gentle-people are naturally prejudiced in favor of their own class. And, upon my word, I am inclined to believe it is very happy for the community at large they should be so."
The two men reached the gate opening from the grounds of the Tower House on to the public road—a broad, straight avenue, the foot-paths on either side divided from the carriage-way by a double line of Scotch firs rising from an undergrowth of rhododendron and laurel. At intervals the roofs, gables, and turrets of other jealously secluded villas—in widely differing styles and no-styles of architecture—were visible. But these struck the eye as accidental. The somber, far-stretching fir and pine woods were that which held the attention. They, and the great quiet of them; in which the cracking of a branch over-weighted with snow, the distant barking of a dog, or the twittering of a company of blue-tits foraging from tree-stem to tree-stem where the red scaling bark gave promise of insect provender, amounted to an arresting event.
After a moment of just perceptible hesitation Joseph Challoner pushed open the heavy gate for the elder man and let him pass out first. Several points in Colonel Haig's discourse pleased him exceedingly little, but, in dealing with men as with affairs, he never permitted minor issues to obscure his judgment regarding major ones. If the old lad chose to be a bit impertinent and showy, never mind. Let him amuse himself that way if he wanted to. Challoner had a use for him just now, and could be patient till he had used him—used him right up, in fine, and no longer had any use left for him. It followed that as, side by side, the two turned north-eastward up The Avenue he answered in a noticeably conciliatory tone:
"I really am indebted to you, Colonel, for telling me this. I own my position looked awkward in some respects. I foresaw I might want to consult some one, unofficially, you understand, about the Miss Smyrthwaites' affairs; and, as you truly say, they've nothing beyond acquaintances here. I recognized there really wasn't a soul to whom I should feel at liberty to speak. But now that I know of your connection