John stirred uncomfortably in her arms. He had an aching sense of wrong, beyond expression and beyond relief. If he tried to express it, his fumbling words were countered by her opportunism and, in the last resort, by her religion. Things were, and there was nothing to be done about them. CHAPTER VIII--THE LONELY MAN A MAN with a foot in two camps is likely to be welcomed in neither and to be lonely in his life. The cotton manufacturers had grown rich, they were established, they were a new order threatening to rival in wealth and power the old order of the land interest, and they were highly self-conscious about it. Land had no valid cause to be resentful of the new capitalists. Land was hit by the increase in the poor rates, but handsomely compensated for that by the rise in land values. But a new power had arisen and land was jealous of its increasing influence in the councils of the nation. Reuben never forgot that he belonged to the old order, was of it, and had married into it. In business affairs, it was necessary to have associations with other manufacturers, but he had no hospitalities at home for them on the occasions when they met to discuss measures of common policy. He entertained them at the factory, he kept home and affairs in separate water-tight compartments, and was loved of none. He was his own land-owner and his own coal-owner, both long starts in the race, and he was at least as efficient and enterprising as his average competitor. A gentleman had come into trade and had made a great success of it. More galling still, he insisted that he remained a gentleman in the old sense, a landed man, “county.” Not in words but by actions and inactions which bit deeper than any words he proclaimed his superiority. And why not? He was superior, he was the husband of Dorothy Hepplestall and it was that fact--the fact that he had married Dorothy and made a success of their marriage--which counted against him with the county far more than his having gone into trade and having made a success of that. They would have welcomed a failure somewhere, and he had failed at nothing. So though he had their society, he had it grudgingly.