Vance, enamored of these visions, finished the circuit of the Park without seeing the central object of them, with whom he had resolved to make an appointment to receive him at home that afternoon. He rode back to the stable where he kept his horse, left it there, and, getting into an elevated car, went down-town to visit his lawyer, going with that gentleman afterwards into the stately halls of the Lawyers' Club for luncheon.
At a table near him, Vance saw, sitting alone, a man named Crawford, whom he had met casually and knew for a hardworking and ambitious junior member of the New York bar. They exchanged nods, and Vance fancied that Crawford looked at him with a scrutiny more close than the occasion warranted.
"You know Crawford, then?" said Mr. Gleason, an old friend of Vance's father. "He began work with our firm, but had an offer for a partnership in a year or two, and left us. He's a tremendous fellow to grind, but is beginning to reap the benefit of it in making a name for himself. If that fellow had a little capital, there is nothing he could not do, in this community. He has never been abroad, has had no pleasures of society, leads a scrupulously regular life, drinks no liquors or wines of any kind, and is in bed by twelve o'clock every night of his life. His only indulgence is to buy books, with which his lodgings overflow. We have always supposed him to be a woman-hater, until latterly, when straws seem to show that the wind blows for him from a point of sentiment. He was in the Adirondacks last summer, in camp with a friend, and I've an idea he met his fate then. After all, Vance, my dear boy, marriage is the goal man runs for, be he what he may. It will develop John Crawford, just as it would develop you, in the right direction; and I heartily wish you would tell me when you intend to succumb to the universal fate, and fall in love."
"I heartily wish I could," said Vance, with a tinge of the mockery he had that morning put aside.
At that moment, Crawford, who had finished his luncheon, passed their table, hat in hand, bowing and smiling as he did so. A waiter, jostling by, made him loosen his hold of the hat, a rather shabby light-brown Derby, that rolled under Vance Townsend's feet. It was lifted by Vance and restored to its owner before the waiter could reach the spot; and again Vance thought he detected a look of significance, incomprehensible to him, in the frank eyes Crawford turned upon him as he expressed his thanks.
"It would have been a benefit to Crawford's friends to have accidentally put your foot through that hat," said Mr. Gleason, laughing. "He is accused by them of having worn it ever since he was admitted to the bar. But then, who thinks of clothes, with a real man inside of them? And no doubt the girl they say he is going to marry will right these trifling matters in short order."
"I like Crawford; I must see more of him," replied Vance. "He strikes me as the fellow to pass a pleasant evening with. I wonder if he would come to dine with me."
"If you bait your invitation with an offer to show your first editions, no doubt of it," said Mr. Gleason. "But to go back to our conversation, Vance. When are we to—"
"I decline to answer," interrupted the young man, smiling, nevertheless, in such a way that Mr. Gleason built up a whole structure of probabilities upon that single smile.
Yes, Vance decided, everything conspired to urge him toward his intended venture that afternoon. When, about four o'clock, he turned his steps in the direction of Miss Ainger's home, he had reached a pitch of very respectably loverlike anxiety. He even fancied the day had been unusually long. He caught himself speculating as to where she would be sitting in the drawing-room, how she would look when he laid his future in her hands.