Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/173

THE IVORY TOWER awfully rich man. Being admired by a rich woman even isn't so good—though I've tried for that too, as you know, and equally failed of it; I mean in the sense of their being ready to do it for all they are worth. I've only had it from the poor, haven't I?—and we've long since had to recognise, haven't we? how little that has done for either of us." So Horton continued—so, as if incited and agreeably, irresistibly inspired, he played, in the soft stillness and the protected nook, before the small salt tide that idled as if to listen, with old things and new, with actualities and possibilities, on top of the ancientries, that seemed to want but a bit of talking of in order to flush and multiply. "There's one thing at any rate I'll be hanged if I shall allow," he wound up; "I'll be hanged if what we may do for him shall—by any consent of mine at least—spoil him for the old relations without inspiring him for the new. He shan't become if I can help it as beastly vulgar as the rest of us."

The thing was said with a fine sincere ring, but it drew from Cissy a kind of quick wail of pain. "Oh, oh, oh—what a monstrous idea, Haughty, that he possibly could, ever!"

It had an immediate, even a remarkable effect; it made him turn at once to look at her, giving his lightest pleasantest laugh, than which no sound of that sort equally manful had less of mere male stridency. Then it made him, with a change of 159