"I will only see Mr. Ralph Duncombe," she said, and she longed for his presence with a feverish impatience; though she had no fixed plan in her mind, nothing but a vague idea that Ralph Duncombe, the cute city man, might be able to help her.
About six o'clock the servant announced him, and she had him shown up to her boudoir. She had had time to collect herself and regain composure, to change her dress for a tea gown and do her hair; but her face was pale and still showed traces of the terrible agitation which she had suffered, and Ralph Duncombe as he took her hand looked at her inquiringly.
"I am afraid you have found the heat trying, Lady Eleanor. I hope you are well," he said, in his grave, sedate voice.
"Thank you, yes," she said; "I am well, quite well. But I am—what is the term you city men use when you want to say that you are worried? Pray sit down," and she pointed to a chair so placed that she could see his face while hers was against the light.
"We find 'worried' good enough for us, Lady Eleanor; but we are worried so often that we think little of it and take things very much as they come."
"Ah, then I envy you!" she said with a genuine sigh. "I am afraid you will think me very inconsiderate in sending for you, you who have so much to occupy your time and energies."
"I am always glad to be of some slight service to you," he said with grave courtesy, "and can always spare time to come to you when you send for me. Is anything the matter? Are you anxious about the Mining Company? You have no cause to be, for everything is going on remarkably well, and succeeding beyond my expectations. Some of the best men in the city have joined us, and, as I wrote to you, the shares already stand at a high premium. You have made a very large sum of money, Lady Eleanor, and are on the way to making a still larger."
"Money, money!" she exclaimed. "It is always money. You talk as if it were the one and only thing desirable and worth having! And, after all, what can it buy? Can it buy the one thing on which one's heart is set? Have you found it so all-powerful that you set such store by it?"
His face flushed and a singular look came into his eyes.
"I—I beg your pardon!" she said hurriedly and almost humbly. "I did not mean to be impertinent or obtrusive; but just now I am in trouble in which I think even the all-powerful money will be powerless."