His eye wandered over the lake and back again before he answered her, in
a dull, heavy tone: "I've had bad luck, and, when you get down, there are
plenty to kick you farther."
"You weren't always poor as you are now--I mean long ago, when you were
young."
"I'm not so old," he rejoined sluggishly--"only thirty-four."
She could not suppress her astonishment. She looked at the hair already
grey, the hard, pinched face, the lustreless eyes.
"Yet it must seem long to you," she said with meaning. Now he laughed--a
laugh sodden and mirthless. He was thinking of his boyhood. Everything,
save one or two spots all fire or all darkness, was dim in his
debilitated mind.
"Too far to go back," he said, with a gleam of the intelligence which had
been strong in him once.
She caught the gleam. She had wisdom beyond her years. It was the greater
because her mother was dead, and she had had so much wealth to dispense,
for her father was rich beyond counting, and she controlled his
household, and helped to regulate his charities. She saw that he was not
of the labouring classes, that he had known better days; his speech, if
abrupt and cheerless, was grammatical.
"If you cannot go back, you can go forwards," she said firmly.
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