Lucy did not answer, and there was a brief silence.
"Of course I'm a fool,"—prodding the ground with his stick. "But if a man were in a jail cell and knew that the sun was shining just outside, he'd keep on beating at the wall."
"Your life is not a jail cell. It's very comfortable, I think."
"It has been bare enough. I have had a hard fight to live at all. I told you that I began as a canal-boy."
She looked at him with quick sympathy. At once she fancied that she could read old marks of want on his face. His knuckles were knobbed like a laborer's. He had had a hard fight! It certainly would be pleasant to rain down comfort and luxury on the good, plucky fellow!
"Of course that was all long ago," said Perry. "I'm not ashamed of it. As Judge Baker remarked the other day, 'The acknowledged aristocrats of America, to-day, are its self-made men.' He ought to know. The Bakers are the top of the heap in New York. Very exclusive. I've been intimate there for years. No, Miss Dunbar, I may have begun as a mule-driver on a canal, but I am choice in my society. My wife will not find a man or woman in my circle who is half-cut."
Lucy drew a long breath. To live all day and every day with this man!
And yet—she was so tired! There was a good deal of money to manage, and he could do that. He would like a gay, hospitable house, and so would she, and they would be kind to the poor—and he was an Episcopalian, too. There would be no hitch there. Lucy was a zealous High Churchwoman.
Why should she not do it? The man was as good as gold at heart. Jean called him a cad, but the caddishness was only skin deep.
Mr. Perry watched her, reading her thoughts more keenly than she guessed.