“When there was no call for her to take any one’s arm,” added Lucia, “the affair being only an every-day family dinner.” “‘Twas simply paralyzing,” said Margie; “but ’twas a sign that everything will be all right from this time forward. Dear me! I can imagine just how your new visiting-cards will look: ‘Mrs. Philip Hayn.’” “Margie, Margie,” said Lucia, in a quick whisper, “do be quiet. I don’t even know whether he really loves me.” “That’s because you didn’t sit at table where you could see his face all the while, as I did. Besides, a stone image would fall in love with you to-night: you never looked so perfectly entrancing in all your life.” So, between all she had seen and heard, Lucia’s head was crowded with pleasant dreams long before it pressed its pillow. CHAPTER XIX. HOPES AND FEARS. Between his duties at the office of the Haynton Bay Improvement Company and his earnest desire to master the mysteries of the iron trade, Philip Hayn found very little time for dropping into moody reflections. Like many another young man in business, he became convinced that a great deal of telling work might be done outside of business-hours: so he spent many evenings and occasional days in endeavoring to forward the interests of his employer, and of the Improvement Company, in which Mr. Tramlay was as largely interested as himself. He had more than business to absorb his thoughts, for his stock of knowledge regarding human nature was at first entirely inadequate to the demands made upon it. At Haynton it was a safe rule that a man whose appearance and manner were those of a gentleman could be safely regarded as, at least, an honest man; in New York he found this assumption caused some of his plans to be utterly shattered by Tramlay’s more experienced hand. The railroad-men who wanted iron, to be paid for partly by stock in their roads, he learned to distrust if they were habitually well dressed and wore kid gloves when visiting Tramlay’s office, but he occasionally saw his employer neglect an appointment, even with his family, and devote his entire time to some insignificant, badly-dressed little fellow, and even to an occasional awkward man who seemed, as he really was, the farmer-secretary and treasurer of a lot of fellow-farmers who had planned a short road for their own benefit. The amount of cash that such a man could pay was seldom large, but not so the probable profit on the stock which Tramlay received “to boot.”