"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 nick-name, 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?"