Of one thing he felt sure: Lucia did not regard him unfavorably. Perhaps she did not love him,--he was modest enough to admit that there was no possible reason why she should,--yet she had not attempted to withdraw that little hand--bless it!--when he was covering it with kisses. She had appropriated him, in the loveliest way imaginable, not only once but several times during the evening, showing marked preference for him. Perhaps this was not so great a compliment as at first sight it seemed, for, hold his own face and figure in as low esteem as he might, he nevertheless felt sure that the best-looking young man in Miss Dinon’s parlors was plainer and less manly than himself. But if her acceptance of his homage and her selection of him as her cavalier were not enough, there was that jealous look, twice repeated. He informed himself that the look did not become her; it destroyed the charm of her expression; it made her appear hard and unnatural: yet he would not lose the memory of it for worlds.
Could it be true, as he had heard while unintentionally a listener, that her father was not rich? Well, he was sorry for him; yet this, too, was a ground for hope. After what he had heard, it was not impossible to believe that perhaps the father of the country youth, with his thirty or forty thousand dollars’ worth of good land, which had been prospected as a possible site for a village of sea-side cottages for rich people, might be no poorer than the father of the city girl. It seemed impossible, as he mentally compared the residences of the two families, yet he had heard more than once that city people as a class seemed always striving to live not only up to their incomes, but as far beyond them as tradesmen and money-lenders would allow.
As to the talk he had heard about Miss Dinon, he resented it, and would not think of it as in the least degree probable. To be sure, he would not believe her thirty-six, though if she were he heartily honored her that she had lived so well as to look far younger than her years. Still, he was not to be bought, even by a handsome and intelligent woman. It was not uncomplimentary, though, that any one should have thought him so attractive to Miss Dinon,--a woman whom he was sure must have had plenty of offers in her day. But should he ever chance to marry rich, what a sweet and perpetual revenge it would be upon people who had looked, and probably talked, as if he were an awkward country youth!