There were intricate, bristling things he rejoiced in; he liked to organise, to contend, to administer; he could make people work his will, believe in him, march before him and justify him.

This was the art, as they said, of managing men--which rested, in him, further, on a bold though brooding ambition.

It struck those who knew him well that he might do greater things than carry on a cotton-factory; there was nothing cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and his friends took for granted that he would somehow and somewhere write himself in bigger letters.

But it was as if something large and confused, something dark and ugly, would have to call upon him: he was not after all in harmony with mere smug peace and greed and gain, an order of things of which the vital breath was ubiquitous advertisement.
It pleased Isabel to believe that he might have ridden, on a plunging steed, the whirlwind of a great war--a war like the Civil strife that had overdarkened her conscious childhood and his ripening youth.
She liked at any rate this idea of his being by character and in fact a mover of men--liked it much better than some other points in his nature and aspect.

She cared nothing for his cotton-mill--the Goodwood patent left her imagination absolutely cold.