He had been taking risks ever since, although time and prosperity had taught him caution and a more sober craft. Sometimes, and especially since he had become a resident in Highbourne Gardens, he had resolved to content himself with the kind of business which avoided speculative perils, but the old instinct always proved too strong for him. Show him an opportunity that offered the chance of great and sudden profit, and he could no more help putting all he had in jeopardy to secure it than can the old gambler refuse one more cast of the dice. But under the chastenings of his new respectability he had become more and more secretive in these dubious transactions. His own family never once suspected them. All that they knew was that there were recurring periods when he went about the house in grim silence, and sat up half the night in the little room which he called his office. At such times his face seemed to harden; new lines appeared about the eyes and the firm mouth; but it always remained impassive and inscrutable. Some day the cloud would lift suddenly; the grim toiler in the midnight office came forth, jovial, loud-voiced, ten years younger; and there was a period of joyous extravagance, a new pair of horses in the stable, a conservatory added to the drawing-room, a large subscription to the church funds, and the genial stir and tumult of dinner and lawn-tennis parties. After a time the cloud rolled back again, but his friends were alike ignorant of the causes that produced or the triumphs which dissolved it. So Masterman lived his life, and it was part of the man that the church had come to occupy a considerable place in it. He felt that he owed it gratitude, for had it not done much to forward his social ambitions? He no longer moved in it humbly, as a man sedulous of notice; he had long since become its undisputed king. The day was past when he was grateful for the hand-shake of a Loker: it was his turn now to confer the favours which he once had sought. It represented an essential feature in his triumph. When the time came that he sought public honours, which he meant to do, the church would prove a valuable factor in his ambitions. He would then get back all that he had given it, in willing service. It pleased him to think that the church itself would turn out a good investment when that time came.