All this is why Charlie Townley--no, Charlie fears rather that he may not always be rich enough to keep it up, and is making up to poor Mamie, in consequence. But that is why, or all these things are why--for those who make of earnest life a play needs must make it stronger as the play goes on--Van Kull walked still with Mrs. Hay, that night; and even Birmingham made overtures to Kitty Farnum; and Charlie did propose to Mamie Livingstone; and Caryl Wemyss propo--told Mrs. Gower that he loved her. CHAPTER XXV. KITTY FARNUM TAKES THE PRIZE. John Haviland was in town that summer. Many things kept him there; he had his own business, and he had his schools, and he had his workmen’s clubs. And just now he had, more than all, the new young men’s club he was founding on the Bowery. He would usually dine at his own club; and there the men he most commonly met were Derwent and Lucie Gower. There seemed to be a certain bond of sympathy between these men. Gower also was kept in town by his business; for Gower had his duties in life, and performed them punctiliously, too. Derwent--well, Derwent was kept there by much the same reasons that kept John at home; the reader may know them later. Furthermore, these men, not being pleasure-seekers, were all three unhappy--for the moment, only, let us hope. Haviland lived most of the time on his little sloop, which he kept moored at Bay Ridge, and he took little cruises in her when the wind served. Derwent was apt to be with him on these; he was an enthusiast in everything, and just now was much interested in John’s work in New York. Then there was politics; the primaries were already beginning, and John was at work over these; a most fascinating subject for Derwent, who was fond of saying that the most noticeable industries in all “property-democracies” had been plied by those who made a trade of patriotism; but John was not a trader. It was Derwent who called ours an age of coal; but “machine civilization” was his favorite term for the nineteenth century, and just now his notion was that property was the pasturage that gave life to the monster that he fought.