"What is it?" I said, gently. "Are you related to—to him?"
"I have hardly any relations, little Heather Grayson," was his next remark. "I am a very lonely man."
"I did not know that rich people were ever lonely," I said.
He laughed.
"Rich people are the loneliest of all," he said.
"I cannot understand that," I answered.
"Why, you see, it is this way," he answered, bending slightly forward, and looking at me—oh! so respectfully, and with, as far as I could guess, such a very fatherly glance; "rich people, who live on unearned incomes, have neither to work nor to beg; they just go on day after day, getting every single thing they wish for. Not one desire enters their minds that they cannot satisfy. Thus, little Miss Grayson, it is the law of life, desire itself ever gratified, fades away and is not, and the people I speak of are utterly miserable."
"I do not understand," I replied.
"I am rich, and yet I am one of the most lonely and, in some respects, one of the most miserable men in London."
I sprang to my feet and confronted him.