Page:The Relentless City.djvu/170

160 papers, rugs, tables, chairs, kitchen ranges, refrigerators, wardrobes, and specimens of carving. Then, at exactly three minutes to two, he again stepped into his motor to go back to the Carlton, where Bertie Keynes was to lunch with him.

There were other people there as well, he found, waiting for him when he got back, and it was not possible for him to talk privately, as he intended to do, to his future son-in-law. He had observed him once or twice during lunch, not eating much, and apparently rather silent and abstracted, and wondered vaguely if anything was the matter. He guessed indeed that some money difficulty or accumulation of debts might be bothering him, but as his talk with him was to be partly on that subject, he considered that if that was the cause, Bertie's evident pre-occupation would not last very long. He had seen a good deal of him in America, and was very well-disposed towards him, partly because Bertie was such an eminently likeable young man, but mainly because Amelie was so fond of him. For Lewis Palmer—a thing which most people would have been inclined to doubt—had a heart. His business, which occupied him, it is true, more than anything else in the world, was to him a thing quite apart from his human life and human affections. In it he was as relentless and as hard as it is possible for a man to be; as far as an affair was business, he was without pity or compassion, for business is as inhuman a science as algebra, and as unemotional, if properly conducted, as quadratic equations. A heart in such spheres would be anomalous—almost an impropriety. Had Bertie—a thing which he had no thought of doing—crossed Lewis Palmer's path in such a connection, he would have had not the slightest compunction in obliterating him, if he was of the nature of an obstacle, however minute. But as the affianced of Amelie, he was something of an object even of tenderness.