"You won't take it into Chancery, Tom, will you?"

The younger man laid his forefinger to the side of his nose, winked
thrice with considerable energy, lifted his hat from its peg, adjusted
his collars in the glass, nodded to his uncle, muttering briefly,
"Back in two hours," and vanished.

Old Bargrave looked after him with a grim, approving smile. "Boy or
man," said he aloud, "that chap always knew what he was about. Tom can
be safely trusted to take care of Number One."

He was wrong, though, on the present occasion. If Mr. Ryfe did indeed
know what he was about, there could be no excuse for the enterprise on
which he had embarked. He was selfish. He would not have denied his
selfishness, and indeed rather prided himself on that quality; yet
behold him now waging a contest in which a man wastes money, time,
comfort, and self-respect, that he may wrest from real sorrow and
discomfiture the shadow of a happiness which he cannot grasp when he
has reached it. There is much wisdom in the opinion expressed by a
certain fox concerning grapes hanging out of distance; but it is a
wisdom seldom acquired till the limbs are too stiff to stretch for an
effort--till there is scarce a tooth left in the mumbling jaws to be
set on edge.

Tom Ryfe had allowed his existence to merge itself in another's.
For months, as devotedly as such natures can worship, he had been
worshipping his ideal in the person of Miss Bruce. I do not say that
he was capable of that highest form of adoration which seeks in the
first place the unlimited sovereignty of its idol, and which, as being