"He looks a different man," said Lady Randolph absently.
"If it had not been for that breakdown in those horrible slums, if——" Betty bit her lip. Lady Randolph pretended that she had noticed nothing unusual, but when she said good-bye she kissed Betty twice and whispered: "If I were you I should not encourage Mark to come here."
"Encourage him?"
"If he needs no encouragement—so much the worse."
Betty laughed nervously. Mark's companionship was a pleasure she would not forego. She was interested in his book; she liked to hear his talk, his gossip of Grub Street; his descriptions of the Dews, mother and daughter; his adventures in search of material. Behind this lay the comfortable assurance that she had adjusted a difficult situation. She had lost the lover of her youth, but she had gained a good husband, a brother, and a friend. So she told herself that she was rich, repeating the phrase, till she came to believe it true. One day she said to Mark, "I suppose you would call me a rich woman, using the adjective in its widest sense."
"We are all rich—and poor," Mark replied evasively. "What rich man is not poor in some respect; what poor man is not rich in another? This is an age of classification. We go about sticking labels on to our friends and ourselves. If you honestly think yourself rich, you are so."
Sometimes he wondered if she could measure the violence of feeling which had driven him from the Church. She never spoke of his change of cloth; still she eyed his red tie askance. Archibald had said something when he came back from his honeymoon.
"At King's Charteris you could keep a curate. The pater said that he had spoken to you. And it's the family living."
"I'll say to you what I didn't like to say to the pater: 'Drop it.'"
"Certainly," Archibald replied. "But it's a pity your powers of organisation should be wasted." Then he made the offer which had provoked astonishment in Lady Randolph. It astonished Mark also, revealing as it did his brother's lack of insight where he (Mark) was concerned.