Gordon laughed. "The eternal feminine," he quoted. "I'm sorry, my dear, but I'm afraid I can't give them up, even to please you. Let me try them first, anyway, and then, if you're still of the same mind, we'll have the cottage and the roses to fall back on in our old age. Well, I suppose I must really be going. Until next week, then."
He stooped and kissed her, and in another moment the door had closed behind him, and he was striding away down the street.
Outwardly, to the casual passer-by, he appeared the very embodiment of content; prosperous, untroubled, self-satisfied. But inwardly, his keen mind was busy forecasting the future, and he was even then dissecting himself, his strong and weak points, his successes and his failures, as judicially and as mercilessly as he might have done if he had been sitting in judgment on some stranger in whom and in whose fortunes he had not a ray of interest.
"Promising to marry her," he mused; "that was the worst mistake. I had to do it, of course, to get at old Pearson, and to get at Palmer, and for that matter I was crazy enough about her for a while to promise anything, but I was a fool not to look further ahead. It's only fools, anyway, who say, 'Let's cross that bridge when we get to it.' I suppose a more dangerous proverb was never coined. In plain English, all it means is that we're too lazy to take a look ahead to see if there's a bridge there at all. Yes, that was my mistake. Given a hundred thousand and my start, I was ready to promise anything, and now there's so much ahead I never dreamed of then, marrying her seems absolutely out of the question. Who would ever have foreseen, though, that she'd develop this spasm of virtue? If she'd been what I thought she was--and what I had every reason for thinking she was--I imagine things could have been fixed up easily enough. I wonder whether--"
Abstractedly, as he crossed towards the park, he had paused for a passing victoria. As the carriage passed, he noticed that its only occupant was a girl, her slender figure clothed in deep black, and glancing up, he was just in time to receive Miss Sinclair's friendly bow. Raising his hat, he passed on and entered the park.
"The devil!" he muttered. "Coincidences are queer things." And with a shrug of his shoulders he turned his thoughts in the direction of the day's plans.