These devoted sentiments, however, were not the prevalent feeling at the Station, where there was a ball after the fireworks with everything of the most costly and splendid description, and where the health of the bride and bridegroom was drank with acclamations in far too excellent champagne. The ladies who had daughters looked out contemptuously over the heads of the subalterns to see if there was not another railway man in the background who would give a similar triumph to one of their girls. But young railway men are not any more satisfactory than young soldiers, and there was not another James Rowland far or near. When it was all over, Helen Stanhope rushed into her husband’s arms with tears of joy, “You have got it, Fred,” she said, “you have got it! and it’s all on account of that kind thought you had (for it was your thought) when you went and fetched Evelyn Ferrars home out of her misery. It’s brought a blessing as I knew it would.” Fred pulled his long moustache, and was not very ready in his reply. “I wish we hadn’t got so tired of it, Nelly. It might be a kind thought at the first, but neither you nor I kept up to the start. God Almighty didn’t owe us much for that.” “Oh, don’t be profane,” cried his wife, “taking God’s name in vain! She didn’t think so. What would she have done without us? And it’s all thanks to her that we have got it at last.” CHAPTER V. Rowland was able to carry out the programme which he had made for himself. He was a man to whom pieces of what is called luck are apt to come. Luck goes rather against the more serious claims of deserving, and is a thing which many of us would like to ignore--but it is hard to believe there is not something in it. One man who is just as worthy as another gets little that he wants, while his neighbour gets much; one who is just as unworthy as another gets all the blows while his fellow sinner escapes. Mr. Rowland had always been a lucky man. The things he desired seemed to drop into his mouth. That white house on the peninsula looking down upon Clyde, with its noble groups of trees, its fine woods behind, its lochs and inlets, and the great noble estuary at its foot, proved as soon as he set his heart upon it procurable. Had you or I wanted it, it would have been hopeless. Even he, though his luck was so great and he possessed that golden key which opens so many doors, was not able to move the noble proprietor to a sale; but he was permitted to rent it upon a long lease which was almost as satisfactory. “I should have preferred to buy it outright and settle it upon you, Evelyn,” he said to his wife as they sat at breakfast in their London hotel, and he read aloud the lawyer’s letter about this coveted dwelling. “But when one comes to think of it, you might not care for a big house in Scotland after I am out of the way. It was to please me, I know, that you fixed on Scotland first. And then you might find it a trouble to keep up if you were alone.”