Young Marrineal did not suffer in health. He
was a robust specimen. Besides, there was his good and protective fairy
always ready with the flag of warning at the necessary moment.
Launched into the world after the elder Marrineal's death, Tertius
interested himself in sundry of the businesses left by his father.
Though they had been carefully devised and surrounded with safeguards,
the heir managed to break into and improve several of them. The result
was more money. After having gambled with fair luck, played the profuse
libertine for a time, tried his hand at yachting, horse-racing, big-game
hunting, and even politics, he successively tired of the first three,
and was beaten at the last, but retained an unsatisfied hunger for it.
To celebrate his fortieth birthday, he had bought a house on the eastern
vista of Central Park, and drifted into a rather indeterminate life,
identified with no special purpose, occupation, or set. Large though his
fortune was, it was too much disseminated and he was too indifferent to
it, for him to be conspicuous in the money game which constitutes New
York's lists of High Endeavor. His reputation, in the city of careless
reckonings, was vague, but just a trifle tarnished; good enough for the
casual contacts which had hitherto made up his life, but offering
difficulties should he wish to establish himself more firmly.
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