"His kind face is more distinguished than any man's I know," cried Gay with spirit. "I learn more from him in five minutes, than all the stupid people I've ever known put together!"
"Including Chris?" said Lossie drily.
"Including Chris."
"Then the sooner you make yourself happy with this pattern of all the perfections, including a few millions, the better," said Lossie, who did not care who Gay married, so long as it was not Carlton.
Gay laughed. "Wasn't it Nathaniel Hawthorn who said that 'to have wealth beyond a certain point, is only to undertake the labour of living the lives of ten or a thousand men as well as your own?' And besides—can't you see, but of course you can't, that a man like that must have had his own ideal, his own romance, ages before he ever saw silly little me? There's a story in his life, and no mean one, I'll wager."
"Really," said Lossie, "I don't think your lovers are much comfort to you. One lets you in for a disreputable sport, another breaks your heart by half-killing himself, and the third string to your bow isn't in the very least in love with you!"
At that moment the door opened, and Rensslaer came in.
"So Mr. Hannen is going on all right," he said in a tone of great pleasure as he shook hands with Gay, and Lossie, with a vague wave of her hand, disappeared.
"Yes—thank God!"
"Nice boy," said Rensslaer, as he sat down opposite Gay, and she gave him a few details of Chris's case. There were dark rings round her eyes—she looked really ill, and Rensslaer guessed that if Chris's accident had shaken her into a vivid realisation of her love for him, it had only the more convinced her that to see his life in almost daily jeopardy for five months out of the year, would be more than she could bear, and that this was the real parting of their ways.