"He doesn't like," said Bertha, "for he certainly hasn't an object—though, after all, that belongs to his mode of life."
"I should like," said Tredennis, "to know something of the mode of life of a man who hasn't an object."
"You will gain a good deal of information on the subject if you remain long in Washington," answered Bertha. "We generally have either too many objects or none at all. If it is not your object to get into the White House, or the Cabinet, or somewhere else, it is probably your fate to be installed in a 'department;' and, as you cannot hope to retain your position through any particular circumspectness or fitness for it, you have not any object left you."
"The fact is," said Richard, "it would have been a great deal better for Larry if he had stayed where he was and fought it out."
"The fact is," said Bertha, "it would be a great deal better for nine out of ten of the rest if they stayed where they were. And when Larry came he did not come under specially exhilarating circumstances, and just then I suppose it seemed to him that the rest of his life was not worth much to him."
"It has struck me," said Richard, reflectively, "that he had a blow of some sort about that time,—something apart from the loss of his fortune. I am not sure but that I once heard some wandering rumor of there being a young woman somewhere"—
"Oh!" said Bertha, in a low, rather hurried voice, "he had a blow. There is no mistake about that,—he had a blow, and there was a good deal in him that did not survive it."
"And yet he doesn't strike you as being that sort of fellow," said Richard, still in reflection. "You wouldn't think of him as being a fellow with a grief."
Bertha broke into delighted laughter.
"A grief!" she exclaimed. "That is very good. I wish he had heard it. A grief! I wonder what he would do with it in his moments of recreation,—at receptions, for instance, and musicales, and germans. He might conceal it in his opera hat, but I am afraid it would be in the way. Poor Larry! Griefs are as much out of fashion as stateliness, and he not only couldn't indulge in one if he would, but he wouldn't if he could."