“They’d be lots harder to dust,” said Lydia dubiously, putting a spangled web of gold over her hair. The contrast between her aspect and the dingy suggestions of her speech made both men laugh tenderly. “When Titania takes to being practical—” laughed Paul.
Lydia went on seriously. “Honestly, Paul, I’m afraid the house is getting too handsome, anyhow—everything in it. It’s too expensive, I’m—”
“Nothing’s too good for you.” Paul said this with conviction. “And besides, it’s an asset. The mortgage won’t be so very large. And if we’re in it, we’ll just have to live up to it. It’ll be a stimulus.”
“I hope it doesn’t stimulate us into our graves,” said Lydia, as she kissed her father good-night.
“Well, your families aren’t paupers on either side,” said Paul.
A casual remark like this was the nearest approach he ever made to admitting that he expected Lydia to inherit money. He would have been shocked at the idea of allowing any question of money to influence his marriage, and would not have lifted a hand to learn the state of his future father-in-law’s finances. Still, it was evident to the most disinterested eye that there were plenty of funds behind the Emery’s ample, comfortable mode of life, and on this point his eyes were keen, for all their delicacy.
As the young people paused at the door, Judge Emery took a note-book out of his pocket and elaborately made a note. “Fifty-five minutes in eight days, Lydia,” he called.
At the end of a fortnight he proclaimed aloud that the record was too discouraging to keep any longer; he was losing ground instead of gaining. He had followed Mrs. Emery to her room one afternoon to make this complaint, and now moved about uneasily, trying to bestow his large, square figure where he would not be in the way of his wife, who was hurrying nervously about to pack Lydia’s traveling bag. She looked very tired and pale, and spoke as though near a nervous outbreak of some sort. Didn’t he know that Lydia had to start for the Mallory Valentine house-party this afternoon, she asked with an asperity not directed at the Judge’s complaint, for she considered that negligible, but at Lydia for being late. She often became so absorbed and fascinated by her own managerial capacity that she was vastly put out by lapses on the part of the object of it. She did not spare herself when it was a question of Lydia’s career. Without a thought of fatigue or her own personal tastes, she devoted herself with a fanatic zeal to furthering her daughter’s interests. It sometimes seemed very hard to bear that Lydia herself was so much less zealous in the matter.
When the girl came in now, flushed and guiltily breathless, Dr. Melton trotted at her heels, calling out excuses for her tardiness. “It’s my fault. I met her scurrying away from a card-party, and she was exactly on time. But I walked along with her and detained her.”
“It was the sunset,” said Lydia, hurrying to change her hat and wraps. “It was so fine that when Godfather called my attention to it, I just stood! I forgot everything! There may have been sunsets before this winter, but it seems as though I hadn’t had time to see one before—over the ironworks, you know, where that hideous black smoke is all day, and the sun turned it into such loveliness—”