Volume One—Chapter Fourteen.
A Telegram.
The same old repetition in Chris Lisle’s brain: “How am I to grow rich enough to satisfy the King?”
Always that question, to which no answer came.
Then would come, till he was half maddened by the thought, the idea that Glyddyr had returned after a few days’ absence and had the free run of the Fort, and would be always at Claude’s side.
“Constant dropping will wear a stone,” he would say to himself; “and she is not a stone. I am sure she loved me, and I might have been happy if I had not been so cursedly poor—no, I mean, if she had not been so cruelly rich. For I am not poor, and I never felt poor till now. But I can’t afford to keep a yacht, and go here and there to races, and win money. He must win a great deal at these races.
“Why cannot I?” he said half aloud, after a long, thoughtful pause. She would think no better of me, but the old man would.
“Surely I ought to be as clever as Mr Parry Glyddyr. I ought to be a match for him. Well, I am in brute strength. Pish! what nonsense one does dream of at a time like this. I can think of no means of making money, only of plenty of ways of losing it. Nature meant me for an idler and dreamer by the beautiful river, so I may as well go out and idle and dream, instead of moping here, grumbling at my fate.
“It’s a fine morning, as the writer said; let’s go out and kill something.”