"If I am to play that part for you," said Montague, laughing, "I am
afraid we'll very soon clash with my brother."

Montague had very little confidence in his ability to fill the part.
As he watched Lucy, he had a sense of tragedy impending. He knew
enough to feel sure that Lucy was not rich, according to New York
standards of wealth; and he felt that the lure of the city was
already upon her. She was dazzled by the vision of automobiles and
shops and hotels and theatres, and all the wonders which these held
out to her. She had come with all her generous enthusiasms; and she
was hungry with a terrible hunger for life.

Montague had been through the mill, and he saw ahead so clearly that
it was impossible for him not to try to guide her, and to save her
from the worst of her mistakes. Hence arose a strange relationship
between them; from the beginning Lucy made him her confidant, and
told him all her troubles. To be sure, she never took his advice;
she would say, with her pretty laugh, that she did not want him to
keep her out of trouble, but only to sympathise with her afterwards.
And Montague followed her; he told himself again and again that
there was no excuse for Lucy; but all the while he was making
excuses.

She went over the next morning to see Oliver's mother, and Mammy
Lucy, who had been named after her grandmother. Then in the
afternoon she went shopping with Alice--declaring that it was
impossible for her to appear anywhere in New York until she had made
herself "respectable." And then in the evening Montague called for
her, and took her to Mrs. Billy Alden's Fifth Avenue palace.