“Sunshine and shadow--in Nature and in life,” she thought. A sigh succeeded--a sigh that sprang like tears “from the depth of some divine despair,” a girl’s tribute to the burden and the mystery “Of all this unintelligible world.” Here, if anywhere, near the summit of Leith Hill, was a refuge from the outward stress of life, a place of peace and quiet breathing. Sir John had benefited greatly from the pure air and calm of the retreat. The high gardens were a glory, and the house--bought ready furnished from a wealthy man’s executors--contained a well-stocked library, in which the jaded refugee from Parliament and Law Courts renewed with some zest the varied reading of his earlier years. Westwood was fifty-four--an age when, if a man allows himself to think at all, the length of life’s journey and its destination are thoughts that recur to him with deepening gravity. Behind him--the years that the locust had eaten; before him--what? Great numbers of men still feel young and vigorous at fifty-four, and much later, but the fact remains that it is the wrong side of the fifty. To some, but to few, celebrity, success, promotion, may come later; but if so, it lacks the heart-flush of early triumph; in some indefinable way the prize, so long fought for and looked forward to, proves something less than solid gold. Rewards tardily won savour of a short lease--an annuity bought late in life, an eleemosynary provision. At fifty-four the artist’s finest picture has been hung; the author’s best book has been published; the great surgeon has performed his greatest operation; the great advocate has scored the most brilliant of his forensic victories; the engineer has built his biggest bridge; the parliamentarian, sick and savage with hope deferred, then sees the biggest prize of all eluding him, or, if it comes at last, it is bestowed hesitatingly, not because of what he is and can accomplish, but of what he was, and tried to do, when at the zenith of his powers. Westwood had been wonderfully successful, as success is reckoned by the man in the street; but success is only relative. You have got something, but it sharpens the appetite for the “little more,” and so the chase continues. The prospect of a judgeship offered him few attractions; _that_ meant finality on five thousand a year. His aims were higher, but politically and professionally his position was complex. The parliamentary situation, and the state of parties and sub-parties, made further progress, even if his health permitted it, quite impossible for the time being. He was alive to that, and conscious oftentimes that probably he had already secured the best that life was likely to offer him.