generosity; she did not love the man, but was touched by his railing
against fate, and fancied she might be able to aid his ambitions.
Woolstan talked of a possible secretaryship under the chief of his
department; he imagined himself gifted for diplomacy, lacking only
the chance to become a power in statecraft. But when Iris had given
herself and her six hundred a year, she soon remarked a decline in
her husband's aspiration. Presently Woolstan began to complain of an
ailment, the result of arduous labour and of disillusion, which
might make it imperative for him to retire from the monotonous toil
of the Civil Service; before long, he withdrew to a pleasant cottage
in Surrey, where he was to lead a studious life and compose a great
political work. The man had, in fact, an organic disorder, which
proved fatal to him before he could quite decide whether to write
his book on foolscap or on quarto paper. Mrs. Woolstan devoted
herself to her child, until, when Leonard was nine, she entrusted
him to a tutor very highly spoken of by friends of hers, a young
Oxford man, capable not only of instructing the boy in the most
efficient way, but of training whatever force and originality his
character might possess. She paid a hundred and fifty pounds a year
for these invaluable services--in itself not a large stipend, but
large in proportion to her income. And Iris had never grudged the
expenditure, for in Dyce Lashmar she found, not merely a tutor for
her son, but a director of her own mind and conscience. Under Dyce's
influence she had read or tried to read--many instructive books;
he had fostered, guided, elevated her native enthusiasm; he had
emancipated her soul. These, at all events, were the terms in which
Iris herself was wont to describe the results of their friendship,
and she was eminently a sincere woman, ever striving to rise above
the weakness, the disingenuousness, of her sex.