but Grantley did not put it so simply or so nakedly as that--that would have been to recognise the action as almost pure revenge. He blinked that side of it, and gave prominence to the other sides. But that side was there among the rest, and he would suffer wrong at her hands with the more endurance the greater were the obligations she was under to him. His love for her and his quarrel with her joined hands to urge him. Commanding Kate Raymore to respect his desire for secrecy, he undertook to consider the matter. But his mind was really made up; and since the thing was to be done, it should be done liberally and splendidly. He had lent his money to Fanshaw, as Caylesham had surmised, with a very satisfactory prospect of repayment; to Jeremy he was ready to lend it on no security, careless about repayment, because he loved Sibylla and because he had so grievous a quarrel against her. It was all a part of his broad and consistent plan of conquering her by his unchanging patience, unchanging love, unchanging persistence in being just what he had always been to her from the beginning, however sore a trial her unreasonableness and her vagaries might put him to. This generosity to Jeremy would be a fine example of his chosen attitude, a fine move in the strategy on which he had staked the ultimate success of his campaign against Sibylla. "If I decide to do it, I'll tell Sibylla myself, at my own time, and in my own way--remember that," he said to Kate Raymore. She had an idea that things had not been going quite smoothly, and nodded in a wise fashion. She was picturing a pretty scene of sentiment when Grantley confessed his generosity. Of the real state of his mind she had no idea, but her own conception of the case was enough to ensure her silence. Grantley went to work quietly, saying nothing to Jeremy, approaching the working partners through Selford, learning what they thought of Jeremy, not letting them suppose that the sum required was lightly to be come by, or was considered a small one, making, like a good man of business, the best bargain that he could for the object of his bounty. These negotiations took some days, and during those days Jeremy's heart lost something of its buoyancy, though nothing of its courage. London was having its effect on his receptive mind--the crowd, the stress, the push, the competition. Courage and brains enough to rise by? Perhaps, but not enough to rise by quickly. A walk about the streets, a look at the newspapers, the talk at the Metropolitan Radical, all taught him that. Wait and work--wait and work! That was what they all said--and they none of them said that it was easy to lay your hands on five thousand pounds.