John Hartley, in his character of pure gainer by the struggles and victories of his father and partners in their branch of trade, had developed very much into a cultivated _dilettante_. The chief sign he gave of having inherited any of the individual vigour and ambition of his stock, was in the zeal and determination with which he avoided the slightest association—save by name and the receipt of the lion’s share of the profits—with the business. Yet, according to Oliver Constable’s principles, John Hartley stood morally responsible for it in its every detail, down to its pettiest customer and its meanest workman, while his responsibility was not confined to his own business and his conduct in its discharge, but extended to his influence over the whole trading class, to which, in spite of every protest, he distinctly belonged. Oliver said he would not judge John Hartley. No doubt the man had an æsthetic bent, and he was squeamish where one kind of vulgarity was concerned. These idiosyncrasies led him almost perforce to dedicate himself to the refining of his tastes and the beautifying of his estate and house—well-nigh to the same extent as the squire of Copley Grange dedicated himself to a like evangel. And naturally the sleeping partner and the squire took to each other’s society, silently agreeing to sink into oblivion the gulf between the gentle fore-fathers of the one and the rude progenitors of the other. John Hartley hit on an earl’s daughter with an equally accommodating memory to consent to be his wife, and never afterwards to allude, except by a calm, smiling, cleverly timed jest, which disarmed criticism and took the censorious world by storm, to the source of the excess of luxuries with which her husband was able to surround her. It was no business of Oliver Constable’s, whatever he might think; he was not called upon to proclaim John Hartley a cowardly shirker and slurrer over of his obligations, an absentee from his post of duty, a deserter of his class. Certainly Hartley was not singular in his interpretation of the rights and privileges of the inheritor of a great firm and its wealth. He went with the multitude in his use or abuse of the choice of occupations and interests which he commanded. Even an earnest, enthusiastic commentator on the ‘grand old name of gentleman,’ who has proved to the gaping world’s edification that it may be borne by a tradesman of the most unsavoury sort, has been forced by the clamorous exigencies of public opinion to allow her hero a problematical title to gentle birth and to wed him to the noble daughter of a sorry gentleman; above all—strange incongruity to promote the pseudo-tradesman to the rank of a squire, and the society of the country squirearchy, before he dies.