But his own wretched money affairs were soon to give him food for pondering. Alice's portrait had gone home in a splendid frame to find a temporary resting-place before being tossed to the Academy; and Mr. Robinson, though seeing him face to face almost daily, delicately sent his cheque by post. Wyndham grasped it with relief: but it proved merely the illumination that accentuated the darkness. For overdue rent and many other calls made it melt away with terrifying swiftness; and Wyndham had indebted himself to the family jeweller for presents to Miss Robinson. Impecuniosity approached him again with no vague menace; kicked him brutally out of his ostrich-like attitude. Nevertheless he shrank in terror from the definite thought of pressing forward the marriage; though, in the clear light of these latter self-communings, money was the sole reason why he had sought it. Not only did he fear that life of simulation with a sickness immeasurable: but he foresaw endless money humiliations at the very outset. He would fulfil his promise honourably, whatever the spiritual cost of it! But he could not face money humiliations in the eyes of his inferiors! A thousand times "no"! He must trust, despite all, to his own strength and performance!--he would do brilliantly with his pictures in the spring!--he would follow up the success and conquer London! He waved aside all his past disasters: he saw his good star in the ascendant, shining--he fixed his eyes on it fanatically. It was an irony of ironies that, after his great surrender, his pride should still flame up unconquered. Before the moral tragedy of love yoked to mockery, he might bow his head in resignation; but Miss Robinson's fortune loomed up as a ridiculous and contemptible complication in a situation already nigh impossible. The metaphor of the vulture was often back in his mind now! The heap of carrion!--he had stooped for the sake of it, and it was now even more loathsome than his former morbid perception of it. His poverty seemed suddenly unbearable. In the past he had endured it. Now, for the first time, he was ashamed of it. So he spoke to the Robinsons of a six months' engagement or thereabouts--which, to their ideas, was reputable and in order; and then felt he had time before him to fling down the gauntlet to fortune again. But in estimating his resources he had counted without his new allies. Alice whispered into her father's ears her conviction that he might easily influence commissions for her _fiance_; and, after thinking about it, Mr. Robinson felt he would like to have a try.