Twenty years of
very successful practice had made him independent, and a mechanical
invention--which he had patented--an ingenuity of which he
thought nothing till some friend insisted on its value--raised his
independence to moderate wealth. For his children's sake he was glad
of this comfort; like every educated man who has known poverty at
the outset of life, he feared it more than he cared to say.
His wife had brought him nothing--save her beauty and her noble
heart. She wedded him when it was still doubtful whether he would
hold his own in the fierce fight for a living; she died before the
days of his victory. Now and then, a friend who heard him speak of
his wife's family smiled with the thought that he only just escaped
being something of a snob. Which merely signified that a man of
science attached value to descent. Dr. Derwent knew the properties
of such blood as ran in his wife's veins, and it rejoiced him to
mark the characteristics which Irene inherited from her mother.
He often suffered anxiety on behalf of his sister, Mrs. Hannaford,
whom he knew to be pinched in circumstances, but whom it was
impossible to help. Lee Hannaford he disliked and distrusted; the
men were poles apart in character and purpose. The family had now
left Ewell, and lived in a poor house in London. Olga was trying to
earn money by her drawing, not, it seemed, with much success.
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