The girl had reopened her book.
'I'm not sorry that he came.

Was there ever such astonishing impudence?
If _that_ is gentlemanly, then I must confess I--Really I am not at all sorry he came: it will give him a lesson.' 'Mr.Eldon may have had some special reason for calling,' Adela remarked disinterestedly.
'My dear, I have no business of any kind with Mr.Eldon, and it is impossible that he can have any with me.' Adela very shortly went from the room.
That evening Richard had for guest at dinner Mr.Willis Rodman; so that gentleman named himself on his cards, and so he liked to be announced.
Mr.Rodman was invaluable as surveyor of the works; his experience appeared boundless, and had been acquired in many lands.

He was now a Socialist of the purest water, and already he enjoyed more of Mutimer's intimacy than anyone else.

Richard not seldom envied the easy and, as it seemed to him, polished manner of his subordinate, and wondered at it the more since Rodman declared himself a proletarian by birth, and, in private, was fond of referring to the hardships of his early life.
That there may be no needless mystery about Mr.Rodman, I am under the necessity of stating the fact that he was the son of a prosperous railway contractor, that he was born in Canada, and would have succeeded to a fortune on his father's death, but for an unhappy _contretemps_ in the shape of a cheque, whereof Mr.Rodman senior (the name was not Rodman, but the true one is of no importance) disclaimed the signature.
From that day to the present good and ill luck had alternated in the young man's career.

His fortunes in detail do not concern us just now; there will be future occasion for returning to the subject.
'Young Eldon has been in Wanley to-day,' Mr.Rodman remarked as he sat over his wine after dinner.
'Has he ?' said Richard, with indifference.