Up to this point Fate seemed to have played deliberately into his hands. He had ruined himself in Southern expectations, Fate had put more than half a million of money into his power, and he had extricated his fortune. An unlucky turn of the die might have betrayed him, and given him up to worse destruction than the former, but all came round as though he had the ordering of events. Not only was there to be no immediate call for that money, no immediate investigation into accounts with a checking of documents and an examination of affairs, but he was appointed supreme custodian of the whole property, and, for upwards of a year from the old man's death, no enquiry disadvantageous to him could be set on foot.
Suppose the old man were to die soon, and business were to keep on the disastrous lines it had adopted of late? What then?
Many and many a day he put that question to himself in the morning before he broke his fast; and again at night before he went to bed he repeated this terrible question--unanswered.
And the more he pondered over this question the less he liked to look at the answer. Not that the simple and direct answer appalled him, for that had been familiar to his mind for some time; the simple answer was, Ruin--Self-imposed Death.
That was the positive answer to the question; but that did not affright him _now_, though it had terrified him at first.
He was still what might be called a young man, for he carried his five-and-forty years more easily than many another man carried thirty. He was not a whit insensible to the many physical and social personal advantages he possessed. He knew he was a favourite wherever he went. He knew he was good-looking. He knew he was clever.
His wife had brought him nothing worth speaking of--not position, happiness. He had been everything to her, and how poorly had she requited him! It was only by the utmost care he avoided a damning scandal alighting upon his name through her.
Fortune had favoured him up to this. Would Fortune be his friend still further? Was it too much to hope that another great piece of good luck might await him?
There was one sure way out of all his danger and difficulties, if he had only been a single man: there was Maud.