“Thank you! God bless you!” said the merchant, wringing Phil’s hand and turning away. Phil again started. The merchant walked toward the club, stopped after taking a few steps, looked in the direction Phil had taken, drew his hat down over his eyes, hurried to his house, entered the basement door, sneaked up the back stairway as if he were a thief, and quietly entered his own room, which, to his great relief, was empty. Meanwhile, Phil had reached the house and been admitted. He had not to ask for Lucia, for he heard through the open door of the parlor some piano-chords which he knew were touched only by her fingers. Lucia did not hear him enter, and as he stopped to look at her she seemed to be in a revery that was not cheerful. He had never seen her looking so-so plain, he would have said, had she been any one else. There was no color in her face, and her cheeks seemed thin and drawn. An involuntary motion startled her, and she turned, exclaiming,-- “How you frightened me!” “I wish you might punish me in some way for it,” said Phil, approaching her. “It was so late that I did not imagine any one would call,” the girl explained. “I was quite busy in the earlier part of the evening,” said Phil,” and I needed to see your father.” “Business is horrid,” said Lucia. “I should think men would attend to it by daylight. Well, I believe papa went to the club.” “Yes; I found him.” “And, as usual, he sent you home for some horrid papers of some kind?” “No, not exactly,” said Phil. How uncomfortable it is to have a dream dispelled--even a day-dream! All along the way to the house he had imagined just how she would look; he could see the flush of her cheek through the half-mile of darkness that he had traversed, his path had seemed illumined by the light of her eyes, yet now she was pallid, and her eyes had none of their customary lustre, and her mental condition--it did not seem at all appropriate to the conversation which he had a hundred times imagined and upon which he had set his heart that night. Well, he would be patient: “Faint heart never won fair lady.” “Aren’t you a little severe on your father for his devotion to business?” he ventured to ask. “Out in the country we have an old saying, ‘Make hay while the sun shines.’ The sun never shone brighter than now in the iron-business.” “Yes, I know,” replied Lucia, wearily. “It’s always something for business’ sake. Yes, we have that same dreadful saying in New York.” “But it’s all for the sake of women that men are so absorbed in business,” argued Phil. “What would your father care for business, if it weren’t for his wife and charming daughters and younger children? He never sees iron, I imagine, while he is talking about it, nor even thinks of the money, for its own sake. Greenbacks and gold and notes and bonds all transform themselves, in his eyes, I suppose, into dresses and cloaks and bonnets and opera-boxes and trips to Europe, and----”