At
the age of thirty, Godfrey Wardour had not yet become so
displeased with himself as to turn self-roused energy upon
betterment; and until then all growth must be of doubtful result.
The point on which the swift-revolving top of his thinking and
feeling turned was as yet his present conscious self, as a thing
that was and would be, not as a thing that had to become.
Naturally the pivot had worn a socket, and such socket is sure to
be a sore. His friends notwithstanding gave him credit for great
imperturbability; but in such willfully undemonstrative men the
evil burrows the more insidiously that it is masked by a
constrained exterior.
CHAPTER V.
GODFREY AND LETTY.
Godfrey, being an Englishman, and with land of his own, could not
fail to be fond of horses. For his own use he kept two--an
indulgence disproportioned to his establishment; for, although
precise in his tastes as to equine toilet, he did not feel
justified in the keeping of a groom for their use only. Hence it
came that, now and then, strap and steel, as well as hide and
hoof, would get partially neglected; and his habits in the use of
his horses being fitful--sometimes, it would be midnight even,
when he scoured from his home, seeking the comfort of desert as
well as solitary places--it is not surprising if at times, going
to the stable to saddle one, he should find its gear not in the
spick-and-span condition alone to his mind.
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