“Yes, that's all right,” replied the other. “But this is Lucy. And somebody's got to talk to her about Stanley Ryder.”
“I will do it,” Montague answered.
He found Lucy in a cosy corner of the library when he came down to dinner. She was full of all the wonderful things that she had seen in Dan Waterman's art gallery. “And Allan,” she exclaimed, “what do you think, I met him!”
“You don't mean it!” said he.
“He was there the whole afternoon!” declared Lucy. “And he never did a thing but be nice to me!”
“Then you didn't find him so terrible as you expected,” said Montague.
“He was perfectly charming,” said Lucy. “He showed me his whole collection and told me the history of the different paintings, and stories about how he got them. I never had such an experience in my life.”
“He can be an interesting man when he chooses,” Montague responded.
“He is marvellous!” said she. “You look at that lean figure, and the wizened-up old hawk's face, with the white hair all round it, and you'd think that he was in his dotage. But when he talks—I don't wonder men obey him!”
“They obey him!” said Montague. “No mistake about that! There is not a man in Wall Street who could live for twenty-four hours if old Dan Waterman went after him in earnest.”