Dan altered his indolent pose and sat forward. “But I am thinking of getting married,” he said.
“I hope it’s to the right girl, Dan.”
And with young assurance Blair answered: “It will be if I marry her. I know what I want all right.”
“I hope she knows what she wants, Dan.”
“How do you mean?”
“You or your money. You have the darnedest handicap, my boy.”
Blair flushed. “I’ll get to hate the whole thing,” he said ferociously. “It meets me everywhere—bonds—stocks—figures—dividends —coupons—deeds—it’s too much!” he said suddenly, with resentment. “It is too much for me. Why, sometimes I feel a hundred years old, and like a hunk of gold.”
Ruggles, in answer to this, said: “Why, that reminds me of what a man remarked about your father once. It was the same English chap your father bought the claim of. Speaking of Blair, he said to me: ‘You know there’s all kinds of metal bars, and when you cut into them some is bullion and some’s coated with aluminum, and there’s others that when you cut down, cut a clean yellow all along the line.’ If, as you say, you feel like a hunk of metal, it ain’t bad if it is that kind.”
“It’s got to stop coming in between me and the woman I marry, all right, though.” Dan did not pursue his subject further, for his feelings about the duchess were too unreal to give him the sincere heartiness with which he would have liked to answer Ruggles.
He went over to the window, and, with his hands in his pockets, stood looking out at the fog. Ruggles, at the table, opened the cover of the book of Mandalay and took out the four checks made out to Lady Galorey and which he had forgotten. He hurriedly thrust them into his pocket.