s what's the matter with
him."

"I knew he would. He was born to do it."

"Thank goodness," said Mrs. Hannay, "he's got the child."

"Oh--the child!"

She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation.

CHAPTER XXI

The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well. Hannay had a
genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration
of his senior partner. Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its
brain. He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable
master of commercial detail.

The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at
home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of
financial prosperity. The office had become his home. He worked there
early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry. For the first time in
his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business.
Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he
applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal
satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this
devotion. There was Peggy's education to be thought of. When she was
older they would travel. There would be greater material comfort and a
wider life for Anne. He himself counted for little in his schemes. At
thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling
down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age.

To the mind of Gorst, the spectacle of Majendie in his office was, as he
informed him, too sad for words. To Majendie's mind nothing could well be
sadder than the private affairs of Gorst, to which he was frequently
required to give his best attention.

The prodigal had been at last admitted to Prior Street on a footing of
his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he
was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he
claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise
to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his
reform must be regarded as the price of his admission.

For, this time, in the long year of his exile, the prodigal's prodigality
had exceeded the measure of all former years. And, to his intense
surprise, he found that Majendie drew the line somewhere. In consequence
of this, and of the "entanglement" to which Majendie had once referred,
the aspect of Gorst's affairs was peculi