Lucy, a pale, thoughtful girl, with large, meditative eyes shaded by gold-rimmed glasses, held out her finely-shaped hand to George Elmore with a forced smile. There was, indeed, very little of the delight of which her mother had spoken to be seen in her face, although the young man scarcely seemed to notice its absence. Various sports occupied him to such an extent that he never had time to make a study of the girl to whom he was engaged. In addition to his penchant for amusements of the most superficial kind, the gift of observation was entirely lacking in his inflated brain. It was generally supposed that he was very much in love with her, but it was a question whether his affection for his riding-horse was not of a similar nature.
Any one who did observe the pale face of the young girl more closely, however, could not have failed to notice the light quivering of her finely-chiselled nostrils, the nervous motion of her red lips.
In spite of the assumed appearance of calm, which proved the power of her will, it was possible to perceive the existence within her of some deep emotion.
She was standing by the window, the involuntary witness of the alms giving when it had occurred. The lame man in the street was no stranger to her; she knew his domestic circumstances only too well, and during his stay in the hospital had helped to support his family without confiding the circumstance to her parents. Whether she had omitted to mention it for fear of making herself ridiculous, or from some deeper motive, perhaps she, herself, could not at the present moment have determined.
Lucy breathed a sigh of relief when the dinner was announced, and her fiance went away to carry his pleasant news to other friends and acquaintances.
Meanwhile the poor cripple hobbled off to his miserable dwelling. With failing breath he dragged himself over the great distance which lay between him and the lower part of the city, without once raising his eyes from the pavement, suffering and devastating mental torture showing in the feverish glow of his sunken eyes.
II.
Martin, the lame man, had been brought from Lyons by Mr. Denison, the silk manufacturer, apparently under the most favorable conditions. In the silk factory in New Jersey he had proven himself a most skillful dyer. The Denison wares came to be noted for their likeness to the Lyonese goods, and in a short time, through their similarity to the imported ones, surpassed all that had hitherto been made on this side of the ocean. For this reason the goddess, Fortune, added continually to the Denison stock of worldly treasures.