But Irene supplied the hiatus for herself, as she was beginning to do pretty often when listening to her father.
Dr.Derwent was, in a sense, a self-made man; in youth he had gone through a hard struggle, and but for his academic successes he could not have completed the course of medical training.

Twenty years of very successful practice had made him independent, and a mechanical invention--which he had patented--an ingenuity of which he thought nothing till some friend insisted on its value--raised his independence to moderate wealth.

For his children's sake he was glad of this comfort; like every educated man who has known poverty at the outset of life, he feared it more than he cared to say.
His wife had brought him nothing--save her beauty and her noble heart.
She wedded him when it was still doubtful whether he would hold his own in the fierce fight for a living; she died before the days of his victory.

Now and then, a friend who heard him speak of his wife's family smiled with the thought that he only just escaped being something of a snob.

Which merely signified that a man of science attached value to descent.