Lost in thought, with set lips and knitted brow, he walked on to his destination. CHAPTER XXIII.--AT THE CLUB. James Forster, of the great City firm of Forster and Forster, found himself at the early age of thirty-five a rich and prosperous man, with plenty of leisure and a simple taste for imaginative literature and the fine arts. He was a widower, his wife having died ten years previously in the first year of their marriage, leaving him an only son; and his fine mansion in Cromwell Road, South Kensington, was presided over by his spinster sister Margaret, his elder by some five years. The cares of business sat lightly on this good man’s shoulders, and he could at any moment have retired with a large independence; but early habits and inclination kept him to the office, long after his daily presence there was unnecessary, and he wished to remain there until his son was old enough to take his place. His office hours, however, were very short, and when they were over he assiduously cultivated the society of painters and men of letters. Many a struggling artist had cause to bless his liberality. The walls of his house were decorated with some of the finest paintings of the period; and he loved nothing better than to add to his collection by discovering genius, and paying liberally for its works, long before the trumpet of fame had given those works a price in the market. Although himself a strict man of business, he loved Bohemian society and Bohemian ways, always holding good-humouredly that it was the prerogative of artists and authors to play pranks denied to plain men like himself. His admiration for genius was quite simple and boy-like. In certain departments of literature, particularly in that of early English poetry, he had an almost special knowledge, gained in the course of his acquisition of a fine old-fashioned library; and nothing delighted him more than to communicate informally to the ‘Megatherium’ or to ‘Notes and Queries’ occasional notes and correspondence on the pet subjects of his study. He had known White for years, and been his staunchest helper and benefactor. Poor White, the best and kindliest fellow in the world, had neither the art of making money nor the knack of keeping it when it came; so that he was generally neck deep in difficulties, and would have sunk often in the quagmire of bankruptcy had no helping hand been near. As a painter he was not a genius; yet Forster bought his pictures, very often commissioning and paying for them long before they had taken shape on the easel. So that the gentle Bohemian had been heard more than once to exclaim that, in the course of his long heavenward pilgrimage, he had encountered only one guardian angel, and that angel was James Forster. The day after the interview described in a recent chapter, White and Forster sat alone dining at a quiet table in the Junior Athenæum Club, of which the merchant was a member.