Among these varied occupations, he managed to pass his time pleasantly and at the same time not unprofitably. In a word, if he did nothing very good, neither did he do anything very bad-indeed, he averaged up considerably better than most men of his class-and it may be added, as a positive virtue, that he had married for love and continued to regard his wife with an affection somewhat unusual in its intensity.
A great many people wondered why he had married Edith Croydon, but they were mostly those who had never met her. She would be called attractive rather than beautiful, with a quiet charm of manner which was felt most intensely in the privacy of her own home. She was quite the opposite of vivacious, yet there was about her no appearance of sadness, and her smile, when it came, was the sweeter and more welcome because long delayed. She gave one a certain sense of valuing it, of not wasting it. Certainly, she succeeded in making her husband an entirely happy man, which is, perhaps, the highest praise that can be given a wife. It is almost needless to add that she thoroughly sympathised with him in his experiments for the betterment of the condition of the poor, and that her marriage had not interfered with her own active work in the same direction.
Her sister was cast in a different mould. Her beauty won an instant appreciation. Six years younger than Mrs. Delroy, Miss Croydon was of that striking, decisive type of brunette which takes a man’s heart by storm. One would never think of her as anything but daring and self-reliant—audacious, even—ready for any emergency and willing to meet it
