You look the picture of comfort in that easy-chair.

I shall only stay long enough to finish a cigar." He walked slowly across the lawn--a noble stretch of level greensward with dark spreading cedars and fine old beeches scattered about it; he walked slowly towards the gates, lighting his cigar as he went, and thinking.

He was thinking of his past life, and of his future.

What was it to be?
A dull hackneyed course of money-making, chequered only by the dreary vicissitudes of trade, and brightened only by such selfish pleasures as constitute the recreations of a business man--an occasional dinner at Blackwall or Richmond, a week's shooting in the autumn, a little easy-going hunting in the winter, a hurried scamper over some of the beaten continental roads, or a fortnight at a German spa?
These had been his pleasures hitherto, and he had found life pleasant enough.
Perhaps he had been too busy to question the pleasantness of these things.

It was only now that he found himself away from the familiar arena of his daily life, with neither employment nor distraction, that was able to look back upon his career deliberately, and risk himself whether it was one that he could go on living without weariness for the remainder of his days.
He had been at this time a little more than seven years in business.