“I am afraid it is the only thing he can do. Do not laugh, please, it is very serious. I am very anxious to know how it turns out.”
“Then you take a great deal of interest in him?”
“I take a great deal of interest in that. They all depend upon it; and also for other things. Do you think he will make much money by it, Sir Thomas?”
“I have not an idea; the only thing I know about literature is that I was offered something if I would write my travels. I have been in a good many out-of-the-way places, you know, and then I am pretty well known; but, unfortunately, I could not, so that money got lost, more’s the pity.”
“It was a great pity,” said Lucy, with feeling. “How strange it seems, you who can not write are offered money for it, and he who can write is kept so uncertain! It seems always to be like that. There is myself, with a great deal too much money, and so many people with none at all.”
Sir Thomas laughed; the frankness of the heiress amused him beyond measure.
“Have you a great deal too much money?” he said.
“Yes, did you not know? But it will not be so much,” Lucy said, with an involuntary burst of confidence, “after awhile.”
This puzzled him quite as much as anything he could say puzzled her. He did not know what to make of it, for there was no jest, but perfect and candid gravity in Lucy’s tone. He thought it best, however, to take it as a mere girlish levity and threat of extravagance to come.
“Do you mean to make it go then?” he said. “Don’t! Take my advice; I have a good right to give it, for I have paid for my experience. Don’t throw your money away as I have done.”