Mr. Swanland was a just man, and therefore conscientiously he could not declare the beam fell in favour of disliking one more than the other. He disliked them equally, when each had served his purpose, and he wished to throw both aside. The trustee's reason for feeling disgusted with Mortomley's estate was a very simple one. He had not made out of it what he expected. He had netted nothing like the amount he conceived was to be realised with good management. Not that he feared a loss, _bien entendu_,--such an error had never yet been written in the books of Salisbury House; but he knew he had done that which touched his professional pride almost as keenly. He had lost profit. He had felt so certain of himself and the _employées_, and the works and the customers; he had entertained so genuine a contempt for Mortomley's intellect; such a profound distrust of his capacity to transact the simplest business matter in a business manner; that he really believed when he took the management of the Homewood works upon himself that he had the ball at his feet. Visions even of paying a dividend may have been vouchsafed to him. Certainly some extraordinary hallucination at one time held him in thrall, for after he had pocketed considerable sums of money, he actually returned much of it freely in the shape of wages to Mortomley's Estate. There were those who said Mr. Swanland, finding himself doing so glorious a trade, had serious thoughts of buying in the plant at Homewood, with a view of pursuing the amusement of colour-making in his harmless moments. Be this as it may, he really had felt very proud of his success, and readily fell into the habit of speaking of Mortomley as a poor creature who did not understand the slightest detail of his own business. Probably, his culminating hour of triumph was that which brought to Salisbury House the order for Mortomley's New Blue which Dolly mentioned to Mrs. Werner. He was like a child in his personal glorification. "If I had only leisure to attend to such matters fully, see what a trade I could build up," he said to the opposition colour-maker; "poor Mortomley never had any transactions with this firm, and ere my management of affairs is three months' old I have this letter." "But still, you must remember, it was Mortomley who made the colour," remarked his opponent, who felt a certain _esprit de corps_ and longed to do battle for his order when he heard a man, whom amongst his intimate friends he concisely referred to as "that fool of an accountant," undervaluing those productions he personally would have given something considerable to know how to manipulate. "Oh! anybody can make a colour," observed Mr. Swanland, who had been turning out Brunswick Greens, Prussian Blues, Chrome Reds, and Spanish Browns with a celerity and a success which fairly overpowered his reason.