More and more of late he had been conscious that he was “getting on.” The fortune already considerable when he conceived the house at Robin Hill which had finally wrecked his marriage with Irene, had mounted with surprising vigour in the twelve lonely years during which he had devoted himself to little else. He was worth today well over a hundred thousand pounds, and had no one to leave it to⁠—no real object for going on with what was his religion. Even if he were to relax his efforts, money made money, and he felt that he would have a hundred and fifty thousand before he knew where he was. There had always been a strongly domestic, philoprogenitive side to Soames; baulked and frustrated, it had hidden itself away, but now had crept out again in this his “prime of life.” Concreted and focused of late by the attraction of a girl’s undoubted beauty, it had become a veritable prepossession.