The Dugdale Millions — page 54: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

44 THE DUGDALE MILLIONS. he failed in devotion to her, why did she so persist- ently show him the difference between her father’s daughter and her father’s clerk? If she was fond of him why did she say so many cutting and con- temptuous things? Why, if she felt the fondness for him Wallis insisted, did she seek to wound him? It was not the way of the world for people to hurt those of whom they were fond. The truth was, and he regretted he was forced to the conclusion, that the possibility of so much wealth had inflamed Bessie’s imagination, and opened up to her visions of a bril- liant existence, in ranks of life not before entertained in her dreams, and while under their early influence, she had seized the first opportunity to make clear to him, the gulf which existed between a struggling clerk and an heiress to untold millions. So he threw his cigar away and went to bed, very sore and unhappy. Mr. Stanton accompanied Dick to the city the next morning. When they parted on arrival, the old law- yer set out upon the task of finding the name of the tenant of the MacDougall Street house at the time of Edmund Dugdale’s death, and Dick went to his office in Cliff Street. On entering, the first object to meet his eyes was a shabbily dressed old man, whose appearance adver- tised his want of prosperity. A clerk informed Dick that the stranger wanted to see him. Wondering what so disreputable an old person could want with him, Dick asked his visitor his business. ‘‘I wish to see Mr. Richard Mason,’’ said the old man rising, and removing his hat with an attempt at jauntiness which struck Dick as oddly incongruous, Assuring him that he saw what he wished to see, Dick again asked him his business. The old man, reseating himself and laying his bat- tered hat carefully upon the floor with his walking stick over it, deliberately took from an inner pocket a Comicloeo® S C@© 3