'You say he's on good terms with both.' 'I suppose he thinks it's no business of his.' Jasper mused over the letter from his friend.
'Ten years hence,' he said, 'if Reardon is still alive, I shall be lending him five-pound notes.' A smile of irony rose to Maud's lips.

Dora laughed.
'To be sure! To be sure!' exclaimed their brother.

'You have no faith.
But just understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me.

He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882.

He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market.