Mr. Rayburn laid his card on the table in silence. She had strongly excited his interest. He honestly desired to be of some service to this forlorn creature—abandoned so cruelly, as it seemed, to her own guidance. But he had no authority to exercise, no sort of claim to direct her actions, even if she consented to accept his advice. As a last resource he ventured on an allusion to the relative of whom she had spoken downstairs.
“When do you expect to see your brother-in-law again?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I should like to see him—he is so kind to me.”
She turned aside to take leave of Lucy.
“Good-by, my little friend. If you live to grow up, I hope you will never be such a miserable woman as I am.” She suddenly looked round at Mr. Rayburn. “Have you got a wife at home?” she asked.
“My wife is dead.”
“And you have a child to comfort you! Please leave me; you harden my heart. Oh, sir, don’t you understand? You make me envy you!”
Mr. Rayburn was silent when he and his daughter were out in the street again. Lucy, as became a dutiful child, was silent, too. But there are limits to human endurance—and Lucy’s capacity for self-control gave way at last.
“Are you thinking of the lady, papa?” she said.
He only answered by nodding his head. His daughter had interrupted him at that critical moment in a man’s reflections, when he is on the point of making up his mind. Before they were at home again Mr. Rayburn had arrived at a decision. Mrs. Zant’s brother-in-law was evidently ignorant of any serious necessity for his interference—or he would have made arrangements for immediately repeating his visit. In this state of things, if any evil happened to Mrs. Zant, silence on Mr. Rayburn’s part might be indirectly to blame for a serious misfortune. Arriving at that conclusion, he decided upon running the risk of being rudely received, for the second time, by another stranger.