Lord Gerald GUsset was a cheery, mellow, and casual
being. He was nothing of a prig with regard to his own
nativity, and would welcome any man as a retainer,
provided he possessed money, passable manners, and a
good tailor. The Saltire alliance was no mere senti-
mental affair. John Strong had disbursed generously
to his son's profit; had engaged to buy The Friary, an
old manor-hpuse in the neighborhood, and to allow
Gabriel five thousand a year. There was to be no legal
settlement in the affair. Lord Gerald and John Strong
gossiped amicably over their port, and discussed de-
tails with a gentlemanly levity that suited the consid-
eration of such sordid trifles. John Strong was eager
to promise; the lord not unwilling to receive. Legal-
ities were shotddered into dusty oblivion. John Strong
preferred a free hand, and was not above professing
extreme generosity in order to obtain an unfettered
monopoly of his son's future. Gabriel was still to be
his son, paid and pampered out of the paternal pocket.
IX

JUDITH'S brother had chosen to sink his deeper
convictions and to embrace expediency as his
lawful spouse. A callow pessimism had persuaded him
to scoff at what he chose to denounce as **the mad pos-
ing of hyper-aesthetical principles." He loved Ophelia
Gusset in a rich physical fashion; the mediaeval spir-
ituality of the poets had cheated him too long. He
began to believe Dante a fool and Petrarch a person
who had sentimentally wasted his opportunities. Five
thousand a year, a romantic home, a superb and comely
wife — these facts suggested compromises that were not
to be contemned. What could not money give him —
Spanish orange -groves, Italian cypress thickets, brill-
iant books, pictures, opulence in mood and movement.
