Therefore he could only guess that she was a rich young woman; such a
house, inhabited in such a way by a quiet spinster, implied a
considerable income. How much? he asked himself; five thousand, ten
thousand, fifteen thousand a year? There was richness to our panting
young man in the smallest of these figures. He was not of a mercenary
spirit, but he had an immense desire for success, and he had more than
once reflected that a moderate capital was an aid to achievement. He had
seen in his younger years one of the biggest failures that history
commemorates, an immense national _fiasco_, and it had implanted in his
mind a deep aversion to the ineffectual. It came over him, while he
waited for his hostess to reappear, that she was unmarried as well as
rich, that she was sociable (her letter answered for that) as well as
single; and he had for a moment a whimsical vision of becoming a partner
in so flourishing a firm. He ground his teeth a little as he thought of
the contrasts of the human lot; this cushioned feminine nest made him
feel unhoused and underfed. Such a mood, however, could only be
momentary, for he was conscious at bottom of a bigger stomach than all
the culture of Charles Street could fill.
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