"Does that mean that he's very badly off?"
"Well, no; I shouldn't say so. He's got an editorship. But he isn't the sort that's made for getting on. In many things he is a fool."
"I admire his folly more than some people's wisdom."
From the look in Lucia's eyes Jewdwine was aware that his cousin no longer adored him. Did she adore Rickman?
"You're a little hard on me, I think. After all, I was the first to help him."
"And the last. Are you quite sure you helped him? How do you know you didn't hinder him? You kept him for years turning out inferior work for you, when he might have been giving us his best."
"He might—if he'd been alive to do it."
"I'm only thinking of what you might have done. The sort of thing you've done for other people—Mr. Fulcher, for instance."
Jewdwine blushed as he had never blushed before. He was not given to that form of self-betrayal.
"You said just now you could either kill a book in twenty-four hours, or make it—did you say?—immortal."