Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/328

318 a six per cent. dividend on the paid-up capital at the end of the year; and he talked with confidence of a fifteen and even twenty per cent. dividend on the whole capital in three or four years, since the property had never hitherto been developed as it should.

The coming of Chelubai and Bottiger lifted me out of my heaviness for the time being, and braced me to the point of resolving to strive to prevent life forcing its triviality upon my attention. They begged me to go back with them to Quorley for a week, assuring me that it would make another man of me. But I could not bring myself to leave London; the idea that Angel was in it was fixed in my mind, and the thought of missing that one chance in a thousand of finding her veritably frightened me.

But when they had gone, in spite of my resolve to be blind to the hopeless triviality of life without her, I soon fell into my former heaviness. It was not so heavy as it had been, and I began to see that if I did not want to come utterly to grief I had better take some effective measures. It seemed to me best to betake myself abroad as soon as the courts rose and try the exhilaration of the Continent. I made no doubt that in time I should recover my old cheerfulness, a bitter cheerfulness, perhaps, but still valuable. As it was, I was losing even the spirit to be cantankerous.

One night I left the club at twelve, and tempted