“My dear,” she was saying, and with perfect sincerity, “you must not let it turn your head. Money can do a great deal, but there are many things it can not do. It can not make you happy--or good.”
“Lucy is good in spite of it,” Mrs. Stone said, she too in all sincerity; “and I don’t think she lets her mind dwell upon it. But it is a very equivocal advantage for a girl,” she added, with a sigh.
All this Frank St. Clair listened to with a grin upon his good-looking countenance. What humbugs! he said to himself--not being capable of understanding that these women were much more interesting as well as more dangerous in not being humbugs at all. He, for his part, waited for an opportunity of making himself agreeable to the little heiress in perfect good faith--_brutalement_ as the French say. He wanted to please her frankly for her fortune’s sake. Not that he could have been unkind to her had he happened to strike her fancy, or would waste her fortune, or do anything unbecoming an honest Englishman. But an honest Englishman with a light purse may surely look after a girl with money without compromising his character. When he asked her to marry him he would not let her see that her money had anything to do with it. He would fall in love with her as a matter of course. It is not difficult to fall in love with a pretty young girl of seventeen. Well, perhaps, not strictly pretty--not nearly so pretty, for example, as that little Poverty by her side, the foil to her wealth; but still very presentable, and not unattractive in her own simple person. Thus the cautious eyes that surrounded Lucy, the hearts that beat with eagerness to entrap and seize her, did not recognize themselves as inflamed by evil passions. They were aware, perhaps, that a little casuistry would be necessary to make the outer world aware of the innocence of their intentions, but there was no aspect of the case in which they could not prove that innocence to themselves.
When the hour of tea was over Mr. Rushton walked home with Lucy to see his old friend. John Trevor was not Mr. Rushton’s equal, nor did he treat him as such. The old school master had taught him arithmetic, that neglected branch of education, thirty or forty years ago, before he went to the public school, where it was not taught; and the prosperous lawyer, who was town clerk, and one of the principal men in Farafield, had always shown a great regard for his old master. “I should never have known more than two times two but for you, Trevor,” he would say, patting the old man on the shoulder, not very respectful, yet with genuine kindness. He went into the blue and white drawing-room, and seated himself in front of the fire, and talked for an hour to old Trevor, liberating Lucy, who hurried away to Mrs. Ford’s parlor, and with enviable confidence in her digestion, had another cup of tea to please Jock, who had been watching for her eagerly from the window. Then she was made to sit down in a creaking basket-work chair beside the fire and tell him stories. Mrs. Ford’s parlor was not æsthetic, like that of Mrs. Stone; but its horse-hair and mahogany furniture produced an effect not much unlike. Mrs. Ford, in a black arm-chair, was elevated as high above the heads of the younger people as if she had been seated in a genuine Chippendale chair. And she crossed her hands on her black silk apron, and sitting back in the shadow, listened well pleased, but half in a drowse of comfort, to Lucy’s stories. She had a little rest in her own person when Lucy stepped into the breach; though Mrs. Ford was not at all certain that Lucy’s stories were Sunday stories worthy of the name.