"Thank heaven I'm right on that score and don't even expect much trouble unless the world would get turned upside down."
"Which is an unlikelihood," said Phillip adroitly. And much as we speak of the uncertainties of this world, the latter remark might be accepted as a truism in regard to the pecuniary affairs of Hubert Tracy.
He was the heir of a rich uncle—a modern Croesus—a man who had amassed a princely fortune by his wonderful success as a manufacturer and speculator.
It was this circumstance which gave the nephew such value in the eyes of good society. Hubert Tracy was fully aware how matters stood. He knew that money was the only screen to cover up all the shortcomings and glaring deformities of our nature. He well knew that he could haunt the abode of dissipation and vice and fill up the intervals with the gaieties of the fashionable drawing-rooms. He well knew that a young man of pure morals with strong determination to rise to the highest manhood would have no chance with the heir of Peter Tracy.
And the young man was right. He was sought after and courted by fashionable mothers who saw only in this beau ideal of a son-in-law—fine houses, fine carriages and in short everything that wealth could give.
The worldly Mrs. Verne was not without her day dreams on this subject. She never let an opportunity slip when she could show Mr. Tracy that patronage which his prospects demanded.
But this woman of the world did nothing rashly. She was always acting from motive and though apparently unconcerned was keenly alive to the situation of the hour.
Such was the tenor of Phillip Lawson's thoughts as he chatted to Hubert Tracy for more than half an hour, when the latter departed less satisfied than when he entered. Then the former set to work upon some important business, and being a rapid penman, soon finished the job. Finding time for a short brown study, or more properly speaking a soliloquy.
"If I go out there and be dissatisfied it will be worse than ever, and there is Lottie, I cannot think of taking her with me. The poor child would break her heart if I left her behind, and our cosy home would be broken up—perhaps forever."
Home had always been the oasis in the dreary waste of Phillip Lawson's late eventful life. After the monotonous round of office-work he always anticipated with delight the hour and circumstances so truthfully depicted by the poet.