He reviewed
the situation in painstaking detail, and at every point
it was all right, or as nearly all right as any human
business could be. He scolded himself sharply for this
foolish susceptibility to the intimidation of nightmares.
"Look at Plowden!" he bade his dolorous spirit.
"See how easy he takes things."
It was undeniable that Lord Plowden took things very
easily indeed. He had talked with eloquence and feeling
about the miseries and humiliations of a peerage inadequately
endowed with money, but no traces of his sufferings were
visible to Thorpe's observant eye. The nobleman himself looked
the very image of contented prosperity--handsome, buoyant,
light-hearted, and, withal, the best-groomed man in London.
And this ancestral home of his--or of his mother's, since he
seemed to insist upon the distinction--where were its signs
of a stinted income? The place was overrun with servants.
There was a horse which covered a distance of something
like two miles in eight minutes. Inside and out,
Hadlow House suggested nothing but assured plenty.
Yet its master told the most unvarying tales of poverty,
and no doubt they were in one sense true. What he wished
to fix his mind upon, and to draw strength for himself from,
was the gay courage with which these Plowdens behaved
as if they were rich.
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