"Let us remember that he is undoubtedly a sick man. He will tell me
nothing of what his doctors say to him. But I put two and two together. I
don't believe he can possibly live long. A year or two at most; perhaps
much less. When I accepted the agency, I confess I thought his physical
weakness would oblige him to put the whole management of the estate into
my hands. It has not been so. The mind, the will are iron, whatever the
physical weakness may be. He conceives himself as a rock in the Socialist
torrent, bound to oppose reforms, and concessions, and innovations, just
because they are asked of him by a revolutionary society. He reckons that
his life will last out his resistance--his successful resistance--and
that he will go down with the flag flying. So that he takes an insane
pleasure in disappointing and thwarting the public opinion about him. For
it _is_ insane--remember that! The moral state, the moral judgments, are
all abnormal; the will and the brain are, so far as his main pursuits are
concerned, still superb."
He paused. Her gaze--half-shrinking--was fixed on the face so near to
her; on the profound and resolute changes which had passed over the
features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of
youth. The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead
in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to have
grown harsher and stronger.
"This, of course, is what I discovered as soon as I had taken the agency.
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