Still, one way and another, the boy came very near touching the confines of despair. Then the tide rose and the stranded ship of his fate began to lift a little. By means of a series of accidents--the illness of his former school-fellow, the already mentioned George Lovegrove, whose post he offered temporarily to fill--he drifted into connection with the banking house of Messrs. Barking Brothers & Barking. There his knowledge of modern languages, his industry, and a certain discreet aloofness commended him to his superiors. A minor clerkship fell vacant; it was offered to him. And from thenceforth, for Dominic Iglesias, the monotony of fixed routine and steady labour, until the day when, as a man of past fifty, restless and somewhat distrustful both of the present and the future, he watched the dying of the sullen sunset over Trimmer's Green from the windows of the first-floor sitting-room of Cedar Lodge.

CHAPTER II

That which had in point of fact happened was not, as Iglesias felt, without a pretty sharp edge of irony. For to-day, London, so long his task-mistress and gaoler, had assumed a new attitude towards him. Suddenly, unexpectedly, she had cast him off, given him his freedom. It was amazing, a thing to take your breath away for the moment. And agitated and hurt--for his pride unquestionably had suffered in the process--Iglesias asked himself what in the world he should do with this gift of freedom, what he should do, indeed, with that which remained to him of life?

It had come about thus. Seeking an interview that morning with Sir Abel Barking, in the latter's private room at the bank, he had made certain statements regarding his own health in justification of a request for some weeks' rest and holiday now, rather than later, in September, when his yearly vacation would fall due.

"So you find yourself unequal to dealing satisfactorily with the increasing intricacy of our financial operations, become confused by the multiplicity of detail, suffer from pains in the head?" Sir Abel had commented, with a certain largeness of manner. "I own, my good friend, I was not wholly unprepared for this announcement."

"My work has not so far, I believe, suffered in any respect," Iglesias put in quietly. "Directly I had reason to fear it might suffer I----"

"Of course, of course. I make no complaint--none. I go further. I admit that the area of our undertakings is enlarged, enormously enlarged, thanks to the remarkable personal energy and strenuous transatlantic business methods introduced by my nephew Reginald. I grant you all that----"

Sir Abel cleared his throat. Seduced by the charms of his own eloquence, he was ready to mount the platform at the shortest possible notice, even in private life. He loved exposition. He loved periods. His critics--for what public man is without these, their strictures naturally inspired by envy?--had been known to add that he also loved platitudes. Be this as it may, certain it is that he loved an audience--even of one. He had been considerably ruffled this morning by communications made to him by his good-looking and somewhat scapegrace youngest son. Those who fail to rule their own households often find solace in attempting to rule the households of others. Speech and patronage consequently tended to the restoration of self-complacency.