'This project is, of course, to marry you,' said May, 'to some friend of her own?'
'Not particularly a friend of hers,' said Eleanor, 'but a man of fashion, and for the matter of that, a celebrity, a connection with whom would, she thinks, be advantageous.'
'Not in the faintest degree,' replied Eleanor. 'He is very clever, very agreeable, and particularly polished and courteous in his manner towards women; a little too polished perhaps,' she added.
'May I ask his name?' said Lady Forestfield. 'Certainly,' said Eleanor, with a smile. 'It is a curious one, but his mother or grandmother--I do not know which--was originally Greek: his name is Spiridion Pratt.'
Lady Forestfield started. 'Spiridion Pratt!' she echoed; 'I think I know him; there could not be two men of that name.'
'O, he knows you,' said Eleanor; 'he has been to your house; he was taken there by Mrs. Hamblin.'
'Exactly,' said Lady Forestfield; 'I remember now.'
'Do you dislike him?' asked Eleanor, looking up astonished at her friend's evident embarrassment.
'I know--I know very little of Mr. Pratt. And it is to him that your sister wishes to marry you?'
'Yes,' said Eleanor. 'And from what little you do know of him, you think I am right in objecting, do you not?'
'I don't say that, dear,' said May, 'but I certainly do not think you are wrong.'
Eleanor Irvine spoke with perfect truth when she said that her brother-in-law, Mr. Chadwick, was a very rich man. Boiler-making and engine-supplying, when you have secured almost a monopoly of the business, are very paying concerns; and very few of the large steam-shipping companies, not only in England but on the Continent, did not procure their propelling apparatus from Chadwick and Co. In the United States, too, the firm was well known and largely employed. Some of the largest grain elevators in Chicago had been supplied by them, and the lifts which convey you to your bedroom on the tenth story at the Jefferson House, Saratoga, or the Great Atlantic Hotel, Newport, N.J., bear the familiar name. This preëminence in his trade had all been achieved by Mr. Chadwick himself. He was a very poor boy, with but a smattering of education, when he first went in as an apprentice to the drawing-office of the works at Newcastle, the manager having taken him on out of friendship for his father, then recently dead; but he went through the whole routine of that establishment, from the hardest hand-labour to the highest head-work, until he emerged from it as its owner, and now held it as a kind of adjunct to his larger and more important establishment on the Thames. Mr. Chadwick was not a speculative man, and was never tempted to put out any of his capital with the perspective hope of large interests in Baratarian loans or investments in the enormous silver mines of Grass Valley, Colorado. He held a certain number of shares, just sufficient to make the directors regard it as good policy to keep well with him, in such steam-shipping companies as he supplied with engines, but he found that the profits derived from his legitimate undertaking brought him in income sufficient to satisfy all his wants.