"I saw him yesterday, and I shall see him again this afternoon," said Jim gravely. "Mark is overworked, you know."
"I don't know," said Lady Randolph drily. "Tell me about him."
Jim began to describe the difficulties against which Mark was contending. Lady Randolph's eyes lost their sparkle.
"Do you believe all you say?" she asked when Jim paused. "You indict Mark's common sense and worldly wisdom, but are you as sure as you seem to be that he is tilting at windmills?"
Corrance was silent.
"I have used your arguments a thousand times," continued Lady Randolph, "and always, but always, I have doubted their real value. And I am supposed to be a scoffer, a freethinker, a woman of the world. It is amazing that I can sympathise at all with Mark, yet I do, and so do you, my friend. You are no more sure than I that he is not right in sacrificing the things which we rate so highly. When I last saw him his face was haggard and white, but he looked happier than you."
Jim stared at the pattern in the carpet, till an awkward pause was broken by the entrance of Betty, a radiant vision from which the young man laughingly shaded his eyes. Her welcome was so warm, that Lady Randolph made certain the girl's heart was untouched so far as Jim Corrance was concerned. Soon after the three joined Lord Randolph in the dining-room, where Jim was persuaded to talk of what he had done and what he hoped to do. The sun had been shining on him steadily during three years; and its glow illumined the present and the future.
"You look pink with prosperity," said Betty; then she added: "Have you heard of Archie's preferment? he has been made a minor canon of Westchester."
"Archibald Samphire is the handsomest young man in the Church of England," observed Lord Randolph.
"Mark always said that Archie had a leg for a gaiter," Corrance remarked.