Jones, whom little escaped, glanced over his shoulder. “By the way, are you on this side for good?” he asked; and Roland answering with the vague shrug the undetermined give, he hastened to add—“or for bad?”
“That depends. I ran over to settle my father’s estate, but they seem to have settled it for me. After all, this is no place for a pauper, is it?”
“The wolf’s at the door, is he?”
Roland laughed shortly. “At the door? Good Lord! I wish he were! He’s in the room.”
“There, dear boy, never mind. Wait till spring comes and marry an heiress. There are so many hereabouts that we use them for export purposes. They are a glut in the market. There’s a fair specimen. Ever meet her before?”
“Meet whom?”
“That girl you just bowed to. They call her father Honest Paul. Oh, if you ask me why, I can’t tell. It’s a nickname, like another. It may be because he says Amen so loud in church. A number of people have made him trustee, but whether on that account or not they never told. However, he’s a big man, owns a mile or two up there near the Riverside. I should rate him at not a penny less than ten million.”
“What did you say his name was?”
“Dunellen—the Hon. Paul Dunellen. At one time—”
Jones rambled on, and again Roland had ceased to listen. But it was not the present now that claimed him. At the mention of the plutocrat something from the past came back and called him there—a thing so shadowy that, when he turned to interrogate, it eluded him and disappeared. Then at once, without conscious effort, an episode which he had long since put from him arose and detained his thought. But what on earth, he wondered, had the name of Dunellen to do with that? And for the moment dumbly perplexed, yet outwardly attentive, he puzzled over the connection and tried to find the link; yet that too was elusive: the name seemed to lose its suggestiveness, and presently it sank behind the episode it had evoked.
“Of course,” Jones was saying, in reference, evidently, to what had gone before—“of course as millionaires go he is not first chop. Jerolomon could match him head or tail for all he has, and never miss it if he lost. Ten million, though, is a tidy sum—just enough to entertain on. A penny less and you are pinched. Why, you would be surprised—”
“Has he any other children?”
“Who? Dunellen? None that he has acknowledged.”
“Then his daughter will come in for it all.”
“That’s what I said. When she does, she will probably hand it over to some man who won’t know how to spend it. She’s got a cousin—what’s that beggar’s name? However, he’s a physician, makes a specialty of nervous diseases, I believe; good enough fellow in his way, but an everlasting bore—the sort of man you would avoid in a club, and trust your sister to. What the deuce is his name?”
“Well, what of him?”
“Ah, yes. I fancy he wants to get married, and when he does, to entertain. He is very devoted.”
“But nowadays, barring royalty, no one ever marries a cousin.”
“Dear boy, you forget; it isn’t every cousin that has ten million. When she has, the attempt is invariable.” And Jones accentuated his remark with a nod. “Now,” he continued, “what do you say to a look at the library? They have a superb edition of Kirschwasser in there, and a full set of the works of Chartreuse.”
The novelist had arisen; he was leaving the room, and Roland was about to follow him, when he noticed that Miss Dunellen was preparing to leave it too. Before she reached the hall he was at her side.
There is this about the New York girl—her beauty is often bewildering, yet unless a husband catch her in the nick of time the bewilderment of that beauty fades. At sixteen Justine Dunellen had been enchanting, at twenty-three she was plain. Her face still retained its oval, but from it something had evaporated and gone. Her mouth, too, had altered. In place of the volatile brilliance of earlier years, it was drawn a little; it seemed resolute, and it also seemed subdued. But one feature had not changed: her eyes, which were of the color of snuff, enchanted still. They were large and clear, and when you looked in them you saw such possibilities of tenderness and sincerity that the escape of the transient was unregretted; you forgot the girl that had been, and loved the woman that was.
And lovable she was indeed. The world is filled with charming people whom, parenthetically, many of us never meet; yet, however scant our list may be, there are moments when from Memory’s gardens a vision issues we would fain detain. Who is there to whom that vision has not come? Nay, who is there that has not intercepted it, and, to the heart’s perdition perhaps, suffered it to retreat? If there be any to whom such apparitions are unvouchsafed, let him evoke that woman whom he would like his sister to resemble and his wife to be. Then, if his intuitions are acute, there will appear before him one who has turned sympathy into a garment and taken refinement for a wreath; a woman just yet debonair, thoughtful of others, true to herself; a woman whose speech can weary no more than can a star, whose mind is clean as wholesome fruit,
