Tracy was infinitely touched by the pathos of this deprecating wail, but he went on as if he had not heard it: “A woman like yourself, with a heart turned in mercy and charity toward other women who are not so strong to help themselves. Why on earth should you vex your soul with fears that she will be unkind to you, when she showed you as plain as the noonday sun her desire to be kind? You mustn’t yield to such fancies.”
“Kind, yes! But you don’t understand—you can’t understand. I shouldn’t have spoken as I did. It was a mere question of a word, anyway.”
Jessica smiled again, to show that, though the tears were still there, the grief behind them was to be regarded as gone, and added, “Yes, she was kindness itself.”
“She is very rich in her own right, I believe, and if her interest in your project is genuine—that is, of the kind that lasts—you will hardly need any other assistance. Of course you must allow for the chance of her dropping the idea as suddenly as she picked it up. Rich women—rich people generally, for that matter—are often flighty about such things. ‘Put not your trust in princes,’ serves as a warning about millionnaires as well as monarchs. The rest of us are forced to be more or less continuous in what we think and do. We have to keep at the things we’ve started, because a waste of time would be serious to us. We have to keep the friends and associates we’ve got, because others are not to be had for the asking. But these favored people are more free—their time doesn’t matter, and they can find new sets of friends ready made whenever they weary of the others. Still, let us hope she will be steadfast. She has a strong face, at all events.”
The girl had listened to this substantial dissertation with more or less comprehension, but with unbounded respect. Anything that Reuben Tracy said she felt must be good. Besides, his conclusion jumped with her hopes.
“I’m not afraid of her losing interest in the thing itself,” she answered. “What worries me is—or, no—” She stopped herself with a smile, and made haste to add, “I forgot. I mustn’t be worried. But who is our Miss Minster? Does she own the ironworks? Tell me about her.”
“She owns a share of the works, I think. I don’t know how big a share, or, in fact, much else about her. I’ve heard my partner, Horace Boyce, talk lately a good deal—”
Tracy did not finish his sentence, for Jessica had sunk suddenly into the chair behind the case, and was staring at him over the glass-bound row of bonnets with wide-open, startled eyes.
“Your partner! Yours, did you say? That man?”
Her tone and manner very much surprised Reuben. “Why, yes, he’s my partner,” he said, slowly and in wonderment. “Didn’t you know that? We’ve been together since December.”