“Possibly. But there are reasons for believing that it will be beneficial all around. Dad isn’t entirely well. His heart was never in the banking business to any great extent, but just the same, the breaking up of all the old routine is hard for him. A complete change will do him no end of good.”
“You said ‘reasons’, and that is only one.”
“There is another. How much do you remember about my sister, Lucille?”
“Only that she is blind, and perfectly angelic, and the most delicately beautiful child that ever breathed.”
“She is all those things yet—only more so. Do you remember Bert Oswald?”
“Oh, yes; quite well. He is a lawyer now, isn’t he?”
“Even so. Worse than that, he is in love with Lucille, and—er—I’m very much afraid she is with him—entirely without realizing it, you know. It’s a pitiful misfortune for both of them. Of course, Lucille can never marry.”
“Why do you say ‘of course’?”
“With her affliction? She doesn’t dream of such a thing! Herbert has been very decent about it. I put him on his guard last summer before I left Middleboro, and he hasn’t spoken—yet. But a day may come when he will speak, and then, as I have told him, there will be trouble and a lot of needless wretchedness. That’s why I want to get Dad and sister away from Middleboro. If they are not where Bert can drop in every few minutes, it will be different.”
For a time the daughter of profitable contracts did not comment on the plan, but when she did there was a touch of her father’s shrewd directness in her manner.