He had overestimated his strength to resist public opinion. He was a proud man and he was outcast and, set himself as he did with ferocious energy to his task, he fell short of forgetfulness. Dorothy Verners was at the end of a stony, tortuous road; it would be, at the best, a long time before he reached the end of that road and the chances that she would still be there, that Whitworth, carelessly secure as he was, would wait long enough to leave her there for Hepplestall, seemed to him, in these days of despondency, too remote for reason. He would never bridge the gulf in time and his patience ebbed away. Not that he ever doubted that, in the end, in money, position, reputation, he would outdistance Whitworth, but Dorothy Verners, as a symbol of his ascendancy, was dwindling to the diminished status of an ambition now seen to be too sanguine. He had not realized how much he would be irked by the contempt of the county. If, at the end of all, he had them at his feet! Aye, so he would, but wouldn’t it be more humbling for them if they came licking, along with his, the feet of a wife of his who was not of their order? Wouldn’t he so triumph the more exultantly? He argued the case against his first intentions, seeking justification for falling honestly in love with Phoebe Bradshaw. Honest love was, at first, very far from his purpose. A gentleman didn’t seduce his host’s daughter, but that rule of conduct postulated that the host be equally a gentleman and Bradshaw seemed, when Reuben came, un-fathomably his inferior, and Bradshaw’s daughter, for all her airs, the sort of flower hung by the roadside to be plucked by any grand seigneur. Nor did he ever, at the back of his mind, move far from that attitude. His tolerant association with these people was an immense condescension, justified only by ulterior purpose. But if marriage with Phoebe fitted his purpose, as in his first reaction from the disdain of the county it seemed to do, why, then, though he never thought of himself as belonging with the manufacturers, it might in the long run prove a famous score against the county.