Greville Hampton was so successful in his speculations that he actually hoped, in time, to make quite an estate of Finglecombe. Money makes money, and thus he became a wealthy man; for true it is, "that the thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never in the way we have imagined it." His dreams of an El Dorado, and Mary's reading thereof, came back to his memory, when he saw house after house being built in the little dell that overlooked the sea; and he recalled her words, "Your riches lie, not in California, but _here_ in Finglecombe." How prophetic were her words! Now that he was becoming wealthy, many persons who had held somewhat aloof from him began to discover a hundred good qualities in him they had never dreamed of before. Ladies had always admitted that he was a more than ordinarily handsome man; their husbands--county men--praised his seat on horseback, his manner and bearing, remarked the cheerfulness and good nature expressed in his face, and began to extol the great frankness of his manner, though, sooth to say, they saw little of him; for he, remembering how they had ignored his existence in the past, ignored theirs in the present time. He steadily added acre to acre. A small, but pretty village, approaching the dignity of a watering-place, had sprung up in the lovely dell where the little cottage of Finglecombe stood, for it had now given place to an imposing brick villa, which seemed to look haughtily down on the humbler dwellings around, with its plate-glass oriels, ogee gables, its handsome oaken porch of fanciful design, and its sweeping approaches, rolled and gravelled between beautiful shrubberies. As wealth flowed in and brought back wonted luxuries with it, he ceased to remember poor Mary's pathetic attempts at a little ornament and refinement amid the humility of her later surroundings, for Greville Hampton became a sorely changed man to all, and to Derval especially. Could Mary have dreamed that a day would ever come when her child would pine for his father's love, as Derval pined in secret? But under the cruel influence of the second wife and her little boy it was so. Much of this, perhaps, arose from Hampton's absorption in his own pursuits, so fearful was he of losing any time that might add to his increasing store. Thus no word of endearment, of praise for studious conduct, no caress cheered the lonely little boy, who saw all such as his father could spare exacted by Mrs. Hampton for his baby-brother, while her petty tyranny and aversion to himself grew daily together, and a woman so petty, weak-minded, and jealous--jealous even of the dead--found much to inflict in the round of home life.