opposing witnesses in my cases. I was bearish—there was no other word for it—to my acquaintances; and when Dolly Delamere, wondering and angry at my neglect of her letters, descended on me one morning soon after breakfast, I saw in her the spring of my ill fortune, and quarrelled with her with a violence that drove her away in tears of mangled vanity. When I was not absorbed in my fruitless search for Angel, or in gambling, I went in a dull heaviness, forever cursing the tiresome emptiness of life.
Chelubai and Bottiger came down from Quorley for a day or two a fortnight later, on the pretence that they wanted a taste of town, really to see Angel. Both of them asked me what ailed me, and showed a concern at my haggardness which touched me the more that I had given them no sympathy in their disappointment at the absence of Angel. Of course, it was not as bitter as mine, because she had not, after all, filled a great place in their lives; but now I was sorry for them. Chelubai thought very highly of the Granite Company; Pudleigh had never let the output fall below the payment of its working expenses and the directors' fees; it was merely a matter of increasing that output. Chelubai was finding markets and to spare for that increase; he was renewing relations with old customers whom Pudleigh had ceased to supply, and already he saw his way to
