When Ralph turned away from the house in Queen Anne’s Gate, the happy excitement of the past hour suddenly gave place to a sobering realisation of things as they were. He, Ralph Denmead, a super at a pound a week, had had the audacity to fall in love with a girl of whose fortune he had, indeed, very vague ideas, but who had always been considered an heiress. That was a situation he liked very little, but it was characteristic of him that he did not sink into any very great depths of depression. He was not easily depressed, having been born with one of those equable tempers which are as delightful as they are rare. Then, too, his very indifference to money for its own sake, the habit he had inherited from his unworldly father of a positive dislike of all display and a contempt for all but the simplest tastes, came now to his aid. Extremes meet. And the marriage, which would have seemed a perfectly simple and desirable arrangement to a selfish fortune-hunter, seemed also perfectly possible to Ralph with his unconventional way of looking at things. He disliked her fortune, would gladly have foregone it altogether, but saw no reason in the world why it should stand as a barrier between them. If she loved him all would be well. He hoped she did love him, but was not certain. Only in that last quiet good-bye of hers something in its very self-control had given him hope; for the first time she seemed to shrink a little from showing how much she felt the parting. She was wholly unlike the little girl he had left sobbing in the schoolroom at Sir Matthew’s country cottage a few months before. As he thought of this, a sort of wild desire to succeed in his profession, and to succeed quickly, took possession of him. His present position at the foot of the ladder seemed no longer tolerable. Patient plodding had been well enough earlier in the day, but now the fiery impatience of youth began to get the better of him. He turned eagerly to Ivy. They had by this time reached Westminster Bridge, and the cold, fresh wind from the river and the wider view seemed in harmony with his eager longing for a fuller, freer life, for an escape from the dull routine of his present work. “Tell me more about this Scotch tour” he said, eagerly. “Do you think there is really a chance of our getting into the company? Does your grandfather think Skoot a decent sort of fellow?” “Oh yes,” said Ivy, her face lighting up radiantly. “Come and talk to him about it. He has seen both the manager and his wife: he used to know them long ago. Oh, do think it over again. Just fancy how beautiful it would be to see Scotland! We would go to Ellen’s Isle together and see the Trossachs!” Ralph laughed. “I fear there are no theatres on the shores of Loch Katrine,” he said.