"Not too smoothly. My financial position becomes a little more obscure and difficult of comprehension every year, as you know; but I rub on somehow. I have been working at literature like a galley-slave; have contributed no end of stuff to the Quarterlies; and am engaged upon a book,—yes Gil, positively a book,—which I hope may do great things for me if ever I can finish it."
"Is it a novel?"
"A novel! no!" cried John Saltram, with a wry face; "it is the romance of reality I deal with. My book is a Life of Jonathan Swift. He was always a favourite study of mine, you know, that brilliant, unprincipled, intolerant, cynical, irresistible, miserable man. Scott's biography seems to me to give but a tame picture, and others are only sketches. Mine will be a pre-Raphaelite study—faithful as a photograph, careful as a miniature on ivory, and life-size."
"I trust it will bring you fame and money when the time comes," answered Gilbert. "And how about Mrs. Branston? Is she as charming as ever?"
"A little more so, if possible. Poor old Michael Branston is dead—went off the hooks rather suddenly about a month ago. The widow looks amazingly pretty in her weeds."
"And you will marry her, I suppose, Jack, as soon as her mourning is over?"
"Well, yes; it is on the cards," John Saltram said, in an indifferent tone.
"Why, how you say that! Is there any doubt as to the lady's fortune?"
"O no; that is all square enough. Michael Branston's will was in the Illustrated London News; the personalty sworn under a hundred and twenty thousand,—all left to the widow,—besides real property—a house in Cavendish Square, the villa at Maidenhead, and a place near Leamington."