What, he asked himself, had condemned him to this kind of career?  Simply the weight under which he started, his poor origin, his miserable youth.  However carefully regulated his private life had been, his position to-day could not have been other than it was; no degree of purity would have opened to him the door of a civilised house.  Suppose he had wished to marry; where, pray, was he to find his wife?  A barmaid?  Why, yes, other men of his standing wedded barmaids and girls from the houses of business, and so on; but they had neither his tastes nor his brains.  Never had it been his lot to exchange a word with an educated woman—­save in the office on rare occasions.  There is such a thing as self-martyrdom in the cause of personal integrity; another man might have said to himself, ’Providence forbids me the gratification of my higher instincts, and I must be content to live a life of barrenness, that I may at least be above reproach.’  True, but Scawthorne happened not to be so made.  He was of the rebels of the earth.  Formerly he revolted because he could not indulge his senses to their full; at present his ideal was changed, and the past burdened him.

Yesterday he had had an interview with old Mr. Percival which, for the first time in his life, opened to him a prospect of the only kind of advancement conformable with his higher needs.  The firm of Percival & Peel was, in truth, Percival & Son, Mr. Peel having been dead for many years; and the son in question lacked a good deal of being the capable lawyer whose exertions could supplement the failing energy of the senior partner.  Mr. Percival having pondered the matter for some time, now proposed that Scawthorne should qualify himself for admission as a solicitor (the circumstances required his being under articles for three years only), and then, if everything were still favourable, accept a junior partnership in the firm.  Such an offer was a testimony of the high regard in which Scawthorne was held by his employer; it stirred him with hope he had never dared to entertain since his eyes were opened to the realities of the world, and in a single day did more for the ripening of his prudence than years would have effected had his position remained unaltered.  Scawthorne realised more distinctly what a hazardous game he had been playing.

And here was this brief note, signed ‘C.  V.’  An ugly affair to look back upon, all that connected itself with those initials.  The worst of it was, that it could not be regarded as done with.  Had he anything to fear from ‘C.  V.’ directly?  The meeting must decide that.  He felt now what a fortunate thing it was that his elaborate plot to put an end to the engagement between Kirkwood and Jane Snowdon had been accidentally frustrated—­a plot which might have availed himself nothing, even had it succeeded.  But was he, in his abandonment of rascality in general, to think no more of the fortune which had so long kept his imagination uneasy?