Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/294

THE IVORY TOWER a considerable relaxation of her original feeling about him in the light of more knowledge and of other things that have happened. In the light, for instance, of her now mature sense of what her father's career has been and of all that his great ferocious fortune, as she believes it to be, represents of rapacity, of financial cruelty, of consummate special ability etc. She has kept to some extent in touch with Gray, so far that is as knowing about his life and general situation are concerned; but the element of compunction in her itself, and the sense of what she may perhaps have deprived him of in the way of a great material advantage, may be very well seen, I think, as keeping her shy and backward in respect to following him up or remaining in intercourse. It isn't likely, for the American truth of things, that she hasn't been back to Europe again, more than once, whether before or after her mother's death; but what I can easily and even interestingly see is that on whatever occasion of being there she has yet not tried to meet him again. She knows that neither he nor his stepfather are at all well off, she has a good many general impressions and has tried to get knowledge of them, without directly appealing for it to themselves, whenever she can. Thus it is, to state things very simply, that, on hearing of the stepfather's death, during the Newport summer, she has got at Mr. Betterman and spoken to him about Gray; she has found him accessible 280