Ted could hear him going on with the quotation as he strolled over to the house. Thereinafter there was a light in one of the upper windows, and then darkness.
He himself sat for a while thinking over the queer chances of the last few days. It was like a novel; not like real life. That hundred pounds, for instance, lying out on the hillside ready for any one who chose to take it. There had been plenty of chances of a hundred pounds even in his life, had he felt any immediate necessity for them, but he had not. His life on the whole had been pleasant enough. Fond of football, cricket, cycling, rowing, he had not thought much of the delights of money-getting. But now? A hundred pounds well laid out, for instance on that investment about which his old school friend, a clerk on the Stock Exchange, had written him only last week, might well be a thousand by Christmas.
It held him fast that hundred pounds, thinking what could be done with it by Christmas.
It might win him Aurelia. For if in other ways equality could be kept up, why shouldn't he have a fair chance? He was the better looking--if that counted for anything. Then he had another advantage. Though he was long past much of the old man's antiquated Socialism, he was keen on more modern ideas, a Radical of the most forward type politically, whereas Lord Blackborough--what was Lord Blackborough? Well, he was a very good fellow anyhow.
Yes, he was a good fellow, though he was right in saying money didn't stick to him. How could it, when he left it, so to speak, lying about.
Ted knocked out the ashes of his pipe, and, after a space, another light showed in one of the upper windows. Then it went out, and the window eye was shut.
But what of the eyes within. Were they shut or open?
Who knows?
Were their owners asleep or awake, conscious that they had reached a crossing of the ways--that one path led up to the rugged mountain--tops, the other into the smooth valleys.
Who knows?