Those traits in Mortomley's character which had won for him golden opinions from Mrs. Trebasson, and something more from her daughter, and which unconsciously to herself knit Dolly's heart to her husband firmer and closer as the years went by, would simply have been accounted foolishness by those who had done so remarkably well for themselves and their families. Their ideal of a good man was Henry Werner, who, upon a small business inherited from his father, had built himself a great commercial edifice; who was a "shrewd fellow" according to his admirers, and who, if he ever lapsed into generosity, took care to be generous wisely and profitably. No man would have caught that clever gentleman dispensing alms with only his left hand for audience. If there was a famine in the East, or a bad ship-wreck, or an hospital in want of funds, or any other calamity on sufficiently large a scale to justify the Lord Mayor in convening a public meeting on the subject, I warrant that Mr. Werner would be present on the occasion and put down his name for a sum calculated to prove that business with him was flourishing. But all the private almsgiving which was done in his family was done by Mrs. Werner, and to "remember the poor and forget not" she had to manage her allowance with prudence. Unlike Dolly she had no private fortune; unlike Dolly she could not go to her husband and say she wanted money to give to that widow or this orphan, or some poor old man laid up with cold and rheumatism and the burden of years superadded. Mr. Werner was in the world's eyes a prosperous man, but although his wife did her duty by, she did not grow to love, him. Mortomley, on the contrary, was a man who did not prosper as he might have done; and Dolly did not do her duty by him; but then she loved him, not perhaps as Leonora Trebasson might have done, but still according to her different nature wholly and increasingly. Was there nothing to be put to the credit side of the last account, do you suppose? nothing of which the world with its befrilled and bejewelled wife failed to take notice. Although, however, Mrs. Mortomley came to understand that in the opinion of his acquaintances her husband had made nothing of the opportunities offered him by fortune, she did not comprehend that what they thought was literally true. She did not know that in business as in everything else it is simply impossible for a man to remain stationary. If he is not advancing he must be retrograding, if he is not increasing his returns his profits must be decreasing, if he is not extending his connexion he must be losing it, if he is not keeping ahead of the times he must be lagging behind the footsteps of progress.