The young man's life was one of disappointment, but it was not unhappy; and more than once he found himself thinking of what it would have been had he had a sister, and that sister had been like Rhoda Penwynn. Then came thoughts of Madge Mullion, who seemed to be developing more and more a desire to enlist him in her train of admirers. Rumour said that she was fond of flirting, and her uncle angrily endorsed it. Now Geoffrey began to think of it, he recalled the fact that he received many little attentions at the girl's hands such as an ordinary lodger would not get. Fresh flowers were always upon his table, both in sitting and bed room; books were left in conspicuous places, with markers in tender passages; he had caught Madge several times busy with needle and thread over some one or other of his articles of attire that needed the proverbial stitch in time; and one night, as he lay in bed thinking, he suddenly recalled the fact that he had said in her hearing that if there was any colour in the universe that he liked, it was blue. "And, by George! she has worn blue ever since. The girl's a regular man-trap, and old Paul's right." "Well," he said, getting up, and giving his pillow a vicious punch, as he lay thinking of her more than usual, "she may go on till all's blue, for I sha'n't put my foot in the trap. Why, confound her impudence! she's carrying on with that smooth-looking fellow Tregenna, or else my ears deceived me, and--bother the wench! she's very pretty, and _piquante_, and attractive, and all that sort of thing, and I wish she was at the bottom of the sea--a mermaid combing her golden hair--not drowned. Stupid wench!" He then turned over, and mentally went down Horton Friendship mine, discussed to himself the losses that the slovenly manner of carrying on the work must entail to the proprietary; and then absolutely writhed over the contemptuous indifference his proposals received from those whom he looked upon as common-sense people. "Hang them!" he growled. "The old cry. What did for our great-grandfathers will do for us. The farther you go back, the wiser people were; so that if you will only go far enough into antiquity there you find perfection. "Now take my case," he said. "I don't propose any extraordinary new invention that shall take men's breath away. I merely say you are getting your ores in a costly, wasteful manner. That you are digging out of the ground vast quantities of mundic and throwing it away. Well, I say to them that mundic is pyrites, and contains so much sulphur; that, by a process, I can utilise that, so as to supply sulphur as a heat producer, to the great saving of fuel, besides which, I can give you metallic results as well, and make a large profit. "Result: they shake their heads and laugh at me." "Hang them! They're as obstinate as--as--well, as I am, for give up I will not."