Women looked after him admiringly, thinking how splendid it would be to have such a man for a lover. Howard heeded nothing of it. He was accustomed to it. He simply took it for his due, and he had other things to engross his mind now.
"It can't be true, it can't be true," he said to himself, again and again in his restless walk. "It is the most undreamed of thing. Who could believe it?"
And yet it troubled him despite his incredulity. It troubled him so much that he went to see a lawyer about it.
He stated the case, and asked him frankly what were his chances if such a thing really should happen.
"No chance at all," was the grim reply. "If you did not resign your claim, Mrs. St. John would naturally sue you for the money on behalf of the legal heir."
"And then?" asked Howard.
"The case would certainly go against you."
Howard went out again and took another walk. He tried to fancy himself—Howard Templeton, the golden youth—face to face with the grim fiend, poverty.
He wondered how it would feel to earn his dinner before he ate it, to wear out his old coats, and have to count the cost of new ones, as he had vaguely heard that poor men had to do.
"I can't imagine it," he said to himself. "Time enough to bother my brain with such conundrums if the thing really comes to pass. And if it does, what a glorious triumph it will be for 'mine enemy!' I'd like to see her—by Jove, I believe I'll go there."