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+Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 4, by Winston Churchill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 4
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5377]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN CHRONICLE, VOLUME 4 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+A MODERN CHRONICLE
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+Volume 4.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+OF CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS
+
+In the religious cult of Gad and Meni, practised with such enthusiasm at
+Quicksands, the Saints' days were polo days, and the chief of all
+festivals the occasion of the match with the Banbury Hunt Club
+--Quicksands's greatest rival. Rival for more reasons than one, reasons
+too delicate to tell. Long, long ago there appeared in Punch a cartoon of
+Lord Beaconsfield executing that most difficult of performances, an egg
+dance. We shall be fortunate indeed if we get to the end of this chapter
+without breaking an egg!
+
+Our pen fails us in a description of that festival of festivals, the
+Banbury one, which took place early in September. We should have to go
+back to Babylon and the days of King Nebuchadnezzar. (Who turns out to
+have been only a regent, by the way, and his name is now said to be
+spelled rezzar). How give an idea of the libations poured out to Gad and
+the shekels laid aside for Meni in the Quicksands Temple?
+
+Honora privately thought that building ugly, and it reminded her of a
+collection of huge yellow fungi sprawling over the ground. A few of the
+inevitable tortured cedars were around it. Between two of the larger
+buildings was wedged a room dedicated to the worship of Bacchus, to-day
+like a narrow river-gorge at flood time jammed with tree-trunks--some of
+them, let us say, water-logged--and all grinding together with an
+intolerable noise like a battle. If you happened to be passing the
+windows, certain more or less intelligible sounds might separate
+themselves from the bedlam.
+
+"Four to five on Quicksands!"
+
+"That stock isn't worth a d--n!"
+
+"She's gone to South Dakota."
+
+Honora, however, is an heretic, as we know. Without going definitely into
+her reasons, these festivals had gradually become distasteful to her.
+Perhaps it would be fairer to look at them through the eyes of Lily
+Dallam, who was in her element on such days, and regarded them as the
+most innocent and enjoyable of occasions, and perhaps they were.
+
+The view from the veranda, at least, appealed to our heroine's artistic
+sense. The marshes in the middle distance, the shimmering sea beyond, and
+the polo field laid down like a vast green carpet in the foreground;
+while the players, in white breeches and bright shirts, on the agile
+little horses that darted hither and thither across the turf lent an
+added touch of colour and movement to the scene. Amongst them, Trixton
+Brent most frequently caught the eye and held it. Once Honora perceived
+him flying the length of the field, madly pursued, his mallet poised
+lightly, his shirt bulging in the wind, his close-cropped head bereft of
+a cap, regardless of the havoc and confusion behind him. He played,
+indeed, with the cocksureness and individuality one might have expected;
+and Honora, forgetting at moments the disturbing elements by which she
+was surrounded, followed him with fascination. Occasionally his name
+rippled from one end of the crowded veranda to the other, and she
+experienced a curious and uncomfortable sensation when she heard it in
+the mouths of these strangers.
+
+From time to time she found herself watching them furtively, comparing
+them unconsciously with her Quicksands friends. Some of them she had
+remarked before, at contests of a minor importance, and they seemed to
+her to possess a certain distinction that was indefinable. They had come
+to-day from many mysterious (and therefore delightful) places which
+Honora knew only by name, and some had driven the twenty-five odd miles
+from the bunting community of Banbury in coaches and even those new and
+marvellous importations--French automobiles. When the game had ended, and
+Lily Dallam was cajoling the club steward to set her tea-table at once, a
+group of these visitors halted on the lawn, talking and laughing gayly.
+Two of the younger men Honora recognized with a start, but for a moment
+she could not place them--until suddenly she remembered that she had seen
+them on her wedding trip at Hot Springs. The one who lisped was Mr.
+Cuthbert, familiarly known as "Toots": the other, taller and slimmer and
+paler, was Jimmy Wing. A third, the regularity of whose features made one
+wonder at the perfection which nature could attain when she chose, who
+had a certain Gallic appearance (and who, if the truth be told, might
+have reminded an impartial eye of a slightly animated wax clothing
+model), turned, stared, hesitated, and bowed to Lily Dallam.
+
+"That's Reggie Farwel, who did my house in town," she whispered to
+Honora. "He's never been near me since it was finished. He's utterly
+ruined."
+
+Honora was silent. She tried not to look at the group, in which there
+were two women of very attractive appearance, and another man.
+
+"Those people are so superior," Mrs. Dallam continued.
+
+"I'm not surprised at Elsie Shorter. Ever since she married Jerry she's
+stuck to the Graingers closer than a sister. That's Cecil Grainger, my
+dear, the man who looks as though he were going to fall asleep any
+moment. But to think of Abby Kame acting that way! Isn't it ridiculous,
+Clara?" she cried, appealing to Mrs. Trowbridge. "They say that Cecil
+Grainger never leaves her side. I knew her when she first married John
+Kame, the dearest, simplest man that ever was. He was twenty years older
+than Abby, and made his money in leather. She took the first steamer
+after his funeral and an apartment in a Roman palace for the winter. As
+soon as she decently could she made for England. The English will put up
+with anybody who has a few million dollars, and I don't deny that Abby's
+good-looking, and clever in her way. But it's absurd for her to come over
+here and act as though we didn't exist. She needn't be afraid that I'll
+speak to her. They say she became intimate with Bessie Grainger through
+charities. One of your friend Mrs. Holt's charities, by the way, Honora.
+Where are you going?"
+
+For Honora had risen.
+
+"I think I'll go home, Lily," she said; "I'm rather tired."
+
+"Home!" exclaimed Mrs. Dallam. "What can you be thinking of, my dear?
+Nobody ever goes home after the Banbury match. The fun has just begun,
+and we're all to stay here for dinner and dance afterwards. And Trixy
+Brent promised me faithfully he'd' come here for tea, as soon as he
+dressed."
+
+"I really can't stay, Lily. I--I don't feel up to it," said Honora,
+desperately.
+
+"And you can't know how I counted on you! You look perfectly fresh, my
+dear."
+
+Honora felt an overwhelming desire to hide herself, to be alone. In spite
+of the cries of protest that followed her and drew--she thought--an
+unnecessary and disagreeable attention to her departure, she threaded her
+way among groups of people who stared after her. Her colour was high, her
+heart beating painfully; a vague sense of rebellion and shame within her
+for which she did not try to account. Rather than run the gantlet of the
+crowded veranda she stepped out on the lawn, and there encountered
+Trixton Brent. He had, in an incredibly brief time, changed from his polo
+clothes to flannels and a straw hat. He looked at her and whistled, and
+barred her passage.
+
+"Hello!" he cried. "Hoity-toity! Where are we going in such a hurry?"
+
+"Home," answered Honora, a little breathlessly, and added for his
+deception, "the game's over, isn't it? I'm glad you won."
+
+Mr. Brent, however, continued to gaze at her penetratingly, and she
+avoided his eyes.
+
+"But why are you rushing off like a flushed partridge?--no reference to
+your complexion. Has there been a row?"
+
+"Oh, no--I was just--tired. Please let me go."
+
+"Being your good angel--or physician, as you choose--I have a
+prescription for that kind of weariness," he said smilingly.
+"I--anticipated such an attack. That's why I got into my clothes in such
+record time."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," faltered Honora. "You are always imagining
+all sorts of things about me that aren't true."
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Brent, "I have promised faithfully to do a
+favor for certain friends of mine who have been clamouring to be
+presented to you."
+
+"I can't--to-day--Mr. Brent," she cried. "I really don't feel
+like-meeting people. I told Lily Dallam I was going home."
+
+The group, however, which had been the object of that lady's remarks was
+already moving towards them--with the exception of Mrs. Shorter and Mr.
+Farwell, who had left it. They greeted Mr. Brent with great cordiality.
+
+"Mrs. Kame," he said, "let me introduce Mrs. Spence. And Mrs. Spence, Mr.
+Grainger, Mr. Wing, and Mr. Cuthbert. Mrs. Spence was just going home."
+
+"Home!" echoed Mrs. Kame, "I thought Quicksands people never went home
+after a victory."
+
+"I've scarcely been here long enough," replied Honora, "to have acquired
+all of the Quicksands habits."
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Kame, and looked at Honora again. "Wasn't that Mrs.
+Dallam you were with? I used to know her, years ago, but she doesn't
+speak to me any more."
+
+"Perhaps she thinks you've forgotten her," said Honora.
+
+"It would be impossible to forget Mrs. Dallam," declared Mrs. Kame.
+
+"So I should have thought," said Honora.
+
+Trixton Brent laughed, and Mrs. Kame, too, after a moment's hesitation.
+She laid her hand familiarly on Mr. Brent's arm.
+
+"I haven't seen you all summer, Trixy," she said. "I hear you've been
+here at Quicksands, stewing in that little packing-case of yours. Aren't
+you coming into our steeplechase at Banbury.
+
+"I believe you went to school with my sister," said young Mr. Wing.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Honora, somewhat surprised. "I caught a glimpse of
+her once, in New York. I hope you will remember me to her."
+
+"And I've seen you before," proclaimed Mr. Cuthbert, "but I can't for the
+life of me think where."
+
+Honora did not enlighten him.
+
+"I shan't forget, at any rate, Mrs. Spence," said Cecil Grainger, who had
+not taken his eyes from her, except to blink.
+
+Mrs. Kame saved her the embarrassment of replying.
+
+"Can't we go somewhere and play bridge," Trixy demanded.
+
+"I'd be delighted to offer you the hospitality of my packing-case, as you
+call it," said Brent, "but the dining-room ceiling fell down Wednesday,
+and I'm having the others bolstered up as a mere matter of precaution."
+
+"I suppose we couldn't get a fourth, anyway. Neither Jimmy nor Toots
+plays. It's so stupid of them not to learn."
+
+"Mrs. Spence might, help us out," suggested Brent.
+
+"Do you play?" exclaimed Mrs. Kame, in a voice of mixed incredulity and
+hope.
+
+"Play!" cried Mr. Brent, "she can teach Jerry Shorter or the Duchess of
+Taunton."
+
+"The Duchess cheats," announced Cecil Grainger. "I caught her at it at
+Cannes--"
+
+"Indeed, I don't play very well," Honora interrupted him, "and besides--"
+
+"Suppose we go over to Mrs. Spence's house," Trixton Brent suggested.
+"I'm sure she'd like to have us wouldn't you, Mrs. Spence?"
+
+"What a brilliant idea, Trixy!" exclaimed Mrs. Kame.
+
+"I should be delighted," said Honora, somewhat weakly. An impulse made
+her glance toward the veranda, and for a fraction of a second she caught
+the eye of Lily Dallam, who turned again to Mrs. Chandos.
+
+"I say," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I don't play--but I hope I may come along."
+
+"And me too," chimed in Mr. Wing.
+
+Honora, not free from a certain uneasiness of conscience, led the way to
+the Brackens, flanked by Mr. Grainger and Mr. Cuthbert. Her frame of mind
+was not an ideal one for a hostess; she was put out with Trixton Brent,
+and she could not help wondering whether these people would have made
+themselves so free with another house. When tea was over, however, and
+the bridge had begun, her spirits rose; or rather, a new and strange
+excitement took possession of her that was not wholly due to the novel
+and revolutionary experience of playing, for money--and winning. Her star
+being in the ascendant, as we may perceive. She had drawn Mrs. Kame for a
+partner, and the satisfaction and graciousness of that lady visibly grew
+as the score mounted: even the skill of Trixton Brent could not triumph
+over the hands which the two ladies held.
+
+In the intervals the talk wandered into regions unfamiliar to Honora, and
+she had a sense that her own horizon was being enlarged. A new vista, at
+least, had been cut: possibilities became probabilities. Even when Mrs.
+Kame chose to ridicule Quicksands Honora was silent, so keenly did she
+feel the justice of her guest's remarks; and the implication was that
+Honora did not belong there. When train time arrived and they were about
+to climb into Trixton Brent's omnibus--for which he had obligingly
+telephoned--Mrs. Kame took Honora's band in both her own. Some good
+thing, after all, could come out of this community--such was the
+triumphant discovery the lady's manner implied.
+
+"My dear, don't you ever come to Banbury?" she asked. I'd be so glad to
+see you. I must get Trixy to drive you over some day for lunch. We've had
+such a good time, and Cecil didn't fall asleep once. Quite a record. You
+saved our lives, really."
+
+"Are you going to be in town this winter?" Mr. Grainger inquired.
+
+"I,--I suppose so--replied Honora, for the moment taken aback, although I
+haven't decided just where."
+
+"I shall look forward to seeing you," he said.
+
+This hope was expressed even more fervently by Mr. Cuthbert and Mr. Wing,
+and the whole party waved her a cordial good-by as the carriage turned
+the circle. Trixton Brent, with his hands in his pockets, stood facing
+her under the electric light on the porch.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+"Well," repeated Honora.
+
+"Nice people," said Mr. Brent.
+
+Honora bridled.
+
+"You invited them here," she said. "I must say I think it, was rather
+--presumptuous. And you've got me into no end of trouble with Lily
+Dallam."
+
+He laughed as he held open the screen door for her.
+
+"I wonder whether a good angel was ever so abused," he said.
+
+"A good angel," she repeated, smiling at him in spite of herself.
+
+"Or knight-errant," he continued, "whichever you choose. You want to get
+out of Quicksands--I'm trying to make it easy for you. Before you leave
+you have to arrange some place to go. Before we are off with the old we'd
+better be on with the new."
+
+"Oh, please don't say such things," she cried, "they're so--so sordid."
+She looked searchingly into his face. "Do I really seem to you like
+that?"
+
+Her lip was quivering, and she was still under the influence of the
+excitement which the visit of these people had brought about.
+
+"No," said Brent--coming very close to her, "no, you don't. That's the
+extraordinary part of it. The trouble with you, Honora, is that you want
+something badly very badly--and you haven't yet found out what it is.
+
+"And you won't find out," he added, "until you have tried everything.
+Therefore am I a good Samaritan, or something like it."
+
+She looked at him with startled eyes, breathing deeply.
+
+"I wonder if that is so!" she said, in a low voice.
+
+"Not until you have had and broken every toy in the shop," he declared.
+"Out of the mouths of men of the world occasionally issues wisdom. I'm
+going to help you get the toys. Don't you think I'm kind?"
+
+"And isn't this philanthropic mood a little new to you?" she asked.
+
+"I thought I had exhausted all novelties," he answered. "Perhaps that's
+the reason why I enjoy it."
+
+She turned and walked slowly into the drawing-room, halted, and stood
+staring at the heap of gold and yellow bills that Mr. Grainger had
+deposited in front of the place where she had sat. Her sensation was akin
+to sickness. She reached out with a kind of shuddering fascination and
+touched the gold.
+
+"I think," she said, speaking rather to herself than to Brent, "I'll give
+it to charity."
+
+"If it is possible to combine a meritorious act with good policy, I
+should suggest giving it to Mrs. Grainger for the relief of oppressed
+working girls," he said.
+
+Honora started.
+
+"I wonder why Howard doesn't come she exclaimed, looking at the clock.
+
+"Probably because he is holding nothing but full hands and flushes,"
+hazarded Mr. Brent. "Might I propose myself for dinner?"
+
+"When so many people are clamouring for you?" she asked.
+
+"Even so," he said.
+
+"I think I'll telephone to the Club," said Honora, and left the room.
+
+It was some time before her husband responded to the call; and then he
+explained that if Honora didn't object, he was going to a man's dinner in
+a private room. The statement was not unusual.
+
+"But, Howard," she said, I--I wanted you particularly to-night."
+
+"I thought you were going to dine with Lily Dallam. She told me you were.
+Are you alone?"
+
+"Mr. Brent is here. He brought over some Banbury people to play bridge.
+They've gone."
+
+"Oh, Brent will amuse you," he replied. "I didn't know you were going to
+be home, and I've promised these men. I'll come back early."
+
+She hung up the receiver thoughtfully, paused a moment, and went back to
+the drawing-room. Brent looked up.
+
+"Well," he said, "was I right?"
+
+"You seem always to be right," Honora, sighed.
+
+After dinner they sat in the screened part of the porch which Mrs. Fern
+had arranged very cleverly as an outside room. Brent had put a rug over
+Honora's knees, for the ocean breath that stirred the leaves was cold.
+Across the darkness fragments of dance music drifted fitfully from the
+Club, and died away; and at intervals, when the embers of his cigar
+flared up, she caught sight of her companion's face.
+
+She found him difficult to understand. There are certain rules of thumb
+in every art, no doubt,--even in that most perilous one of lion-taming.
+But here was a baffling, individual lion. She liked him best, she told
+herself, when he purred platonically, but she could by no means be sure
+that his subjection was complete. Sometimes he had scratched her in his
+play. And however natural it is to desire a lion for one's friend, to be
+eaten is both uncomfortable and inglorious.
+
+"That's, a remarkable husband of yours," he said at length.
+
+"I shouldn't have said that you were a particularly good judge of
+husbands," she retorted, after a moment of surprise.
+
+He acknowledged with a laugh the justice of this observation.
+
+"I stand corrected. He is by no means a remarkable husband. Permit me to
+say he is a remarkable man."
+
+"What makes you think so?" asked Honora, considerably disturbed.
+
+"Because he induced you to marry him, for one thing," said Brent. "Of
+course he got you before you knew what you were worth, but we must give
+him credit for discovery and foresight."
+
+"Perhaps," Honora could not resist replying, "perhaps he didn't know what
+he was getting."
+
+"That's probably true," Brent assented, "or he'd be sitting here now,
+where I am, instead of playing poker. Although there is something in
+matrimony that takes the bloom off the peach."
+
+"I think that's a horrid, cynical remark," said Honora.
+
+"Well," he said, "we speak according to our experiences--that is, if
+we're not inclined to be hypocritical. Most women are."
+
+Honora was silent. He had thrown away his cigar, and she could no longer
+see his face. She wondered whither he was leading.
+
+"How would you like to see your husband president of a trust company?" he
+said suddenly.
+
+"Howard--president of a trust company!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded. And added enigmatically, "Smaller men have been."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't joke about Howard," she said.
+
+"How does the idea strike you?" he persisted. "Ambition satisfied
+--temporarily; Quicksands a mile-stone on a back road; another toy to
+break; husband a big man in the community, so far as the eye can see;
+visiting list on Fifth Avenue, and all that sort of thing."
+
+"I once told you you could be brutal," she said.
+
+"You haven't told me what you thought of the idea."
+
+"I wish you'd be sensible once in a while," she exclaimed.
+
+"Howard Spence, President of the Orange Trust Company!" he recited. "I
+suppose no man is a hero to his wife. Does it sound so incredible?"
+
+It did. But Honora did not say so.
+
+"What have I to do with it?" she asked, in pardonable doubt as to his
+seriousness.
+
+"Everything," answered Brent. "Women of your type usually have. They make
+and mar without rhyme or reason--set business by the ears, alter the gold
+reserve, disturb the balance of trade, and nobody ever suspects it. Old
+James Wing and I have got a trust company organized, and the building up,
+and the man Wing wanted for president backed out."
+
+Honora sat up.
+
+"Why--why did he 'back out'?" she demanded.
+
+"He preferred to stay where he was, I suppose," replied Brent, in another
+tone. "The point is that the place is empty. I'll give it to YOU."
+
+"To me?"
+
+"Certainly," said Brent, "I don't pretend to care anything about your
+husband. He'll do as well as the next man. His duties are pretty well
+--defined."
+
+Again she was silent. But after a moment dropped back in her chair and
+laughed uneasily.
+
+"You're preposterous," she said; "I can't think why I let you talk to me
+in this way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+OF MENTAL PROCESSES--FEMININE AND INSOLUBLE
+
+Honora may be pardoned for finally ascribing to Mr. Brent's somewhat
+sardonic sense of humour his remarks concerning her husband's elevation
+to a conspicuous position in the world of finance. Taken in any other
+sense than a joke, they were both insulting and degrading, and made her
+face burn when she thought of them. After he had gone--or rather after
+she had dismissed him--she took a book upstairs to wait for Howard, but
+she could not read. At times she wished she had rebuked Trixton Brent
+more forcibly, although he was not an easy person to rebuke; and again
+she reflected that, had she taken the matter too seriously, she would
+have laid herself open to his ridicule. The lion was often unwittingly
+rough, and perhaps that was part of his fascination.
+
+If Howard had come home before midnight it is possible that she might
+have tried to sound him as to his relations with Trixton Brent. That
+gentleman, she remembered, had the reputation of being a peculiarly
+hardheaded business man, and it was of course absurd that he should offer
+her husband a position merely to please her. And her imagination failed
+her when she tried to think of Howard as the president of a trust
+company. She was unable to picture him in a great executive office:
+
+This tram of thought led her to the unaccustomed task of analyzing his
+character. For the first time since her marriage comparisons crept into
+her mind, and she awoke to the fact that he was not a masterful man--even
+among men. For all his self-confidence-self-assurance, perhaps, would be
+the better word--he was in reality a follower, not a leader; a gleaner.
+He did not lack ideas. She tried to arrest the process in her brain when
+she got as far as asking herself whether it might not be that he lacked
+ideals. Since in business matters he never had taken her into his
+confidence, and since she would not at any rate have understood such
+things, she had no proof of such a failing. But one or two vague remarks
+of Trixton Brent's which she recalled, and Howard's own request that she
+should be friendly with Brent, reenforced her instinct on this point.
+
+When she heard her husband's footstep on the porch, she put out her
+light, but still lay thinking in the darkness. Her revelations had
+arrived at the uncomfortable stage where they began to frighten her, and
+with an effort she forced herself to turn to the other side of the
+account. The hour was conducive to exaggerations. Perfection in husbands
+was evidently a state not to be considered by any woman in her right
+senses. He was more or less amenable, and he was prosperous, although
+definite news of that prosperity never came from him--Quicksands always
+knew of it first. An instance of this second-hand acquisition of
+knowledge occurred the very next morning, when Lily Dallam, with much
+dignity, walked into Honora's little sitting-room. There was no apparent
+reason why dignity should not have been becoming to Lily Dallam, for she
+was by no means an unimpressive-looking woman; but the assumption by her
+of that quality always made her a little tragic or (if one chanced to be
+in the humour--Honora was not) a little ridiculous.
+
+"I suppose I have no pride," she said, as she halted within a few feet of
+the doorway.
+
+"Why, Lily!" exclaimed Honora, pushing back the chair from her desk, and
+rising.
+
+But Mrs. Dallam did not move.
+
+"I suppose I have no pride," she repeated in a dead voice, "but I just
+couldn't help coming over and giving you a chance."
+
+"Giving me a chance?" said Honora.
+
+"To explain--after the way you treated me at the polo game. If I hadn't
+seen it with my own eyes, I shouldn't have believed it. I don't think I
+should have trusted my own eyes," Mrs. Dallam went so far as to affirm,
+"if Lula Chandos and Clara Trowbridge and others hadn't been there and
+seen it too; I shouldn't have believed it."
+
+Honora was finding penitence a little difficult. But her heart was kind.
+
+"Do sit down, Lily," she begged. "If I've offended you in any way, I'm
+exceedingly sorry--I am, really. You ought to know me well enough to
+understand that I wouldn't do anything to hurt your feelings."
+
+"And when I counted on you so, for my tea and dinner at the club!"
+continued Mrs. Dallam. "There were other women dying to come. And you
+said you had a headache, and were tired."
+
+"I was," began Honora, fruitlessly.
+
+"And you were so popular in Quicksands--everybody was crazy about you.
+You were so sweet and so unspoiled. I might have known that it couldn't
+last. And now, because Abby Kame and Cecil Grainger and--"
+
+"Lily, please don't say such things!" Honora implored, revolted.
+
+"Of course you won't be satisfied now with anything less than Banbury or
+Newport. But you can't say I didn't warn you, Honora, that they are a
+horrid, selfish, fast lot," Lily Dallam declared, and brushed her eyes
+with her handkerchief. "I did love you."
+
+"If you'll only be reasonable a moment, Lily,--" said Honora.
+
+"Reasonable! I saw you with my own eyes. Five minutes after you left me
+they all started for your house, and Lula Chandos said it was the
+quickest cure of a headache she had ever seen."
+
+"Lily," Honora began again, with exemplary patience, when people invite
+themselves to one's house, it's a little difficult to refuse them
+hospitality, isn't it?"
+
+"Invite themselves?"
+
+"Yes," replied Honora. "If I weren't--fond of you, too, I shouldn't make
+this explanation. I was tired. I never felt less like entertaining
+strangers. They wanted to play bridge, there wasn't a quiet spot in the
+Club where they could go. They knew I was on my way home, and they
+suggested my house. That is how it happened."
+
+Mrs. Dallam was silent a moment.
+
+"May I have one of Howard's cigarettes?" she asked, and added, after this
+modest wish had been supplied, that's just like them. They're willing to
+make use of anybody."
+
+"I meant," said Honora, "to have gone to your house this morning and to
+have explained how it happened."
+
+Another brief silence, broken by Lily Dallam.
+
+"Did you notice the skirt of that suit Abby Kame had on?", she asked.
+"I'm sure she paid a fabulous price for it in Paris, and it's exactly
+like one I ordered on Tuesday."
+
+The details of the rest of this conversation may be omitted. That Honora
+was forgiven, and Mrs. Dallam's spirits restored may be inferred from her
+final remark.
+
+"My dear, what do you think of Sid and Howard making twenty thousand
+dollars apiece in Sassafras Copper? Isn't it too lovely! I'm having a
+little architect make me plans for a conservatory. You know I've always
+been dying for one--I don't see how I've lived all these years without
+it."
+
+Honora, after her friend had gone, sat down in one of the wicker chairs
+on the porch. She had a very vague idea as to how much twenty thousand
+dollars was, but she reflected that while they had lived in Rivington
+Howard must have made many similar sums, of which she was unaware.
+Gradually she began to realize, however, that her resentment of the lack
+of confidence of her husband was by no means the only cause of the
+feeling that took possession of and overwhelmed her. Something like it
+she had experienced before: to-day her thoughts seemed to run through her
+in pulsations, like waves of heat, and she wondered that she could have
+controlled herself while listening to Lily Dallam.
+
+Mrs. Dallam's reproaches presented themselves to Honora in new aspects.
+She began to feel now, with an intensity that frightened her, distaste
+and rebellion. It was intolerable that she should be called to account
+for the people she chose to have in her house, that any sort of pressure
+should be brought to bear on her to confine her friends to Quicksands.
+Treason, heresy, disloyalty to the cult of that community--in reality
+these, and not a breach of engagement, were the things of which she had
+been accused. She saw now. She would not be tied to Quicksands--she would
+not, she would not, she would not! She owed it no allegiance. Her very
+soul rebelled at the thought, and cried out that she was made for
+something better, something higher than the life she had been leading.
+She would permit no one forcibly to restrict her horizon.
+
+Just where and how this higher and better life was to be found Honora did
+not know; but the belief of her childhood--that it existed somewhere--was
+still intact. Her powers of analysis, we see, are only just budding, and
+she did not and could not define the ideal existence which she so
+unflaggingly sought. Of two of its attributes only she was sure--that it
+was to be free from restraint and from odious comparisons. Honora's
+development, it may be remarked, proceeds by the action of irritants, and
+of late her protest against Quicksands and what it represented had driven
+her to other books besides the treatise on bridge. The library she had
+collected at Rivington she had brought with her, and was adding to it
+from time to time. Its volumes are neither sufficiently extensive or
+profound to enumerate.
+
+Those who are more or less skilled in psychology may attempt to establish
+a sequence between the events and reflections just related and the fact
+that, one morning a fortnight later, Honora found herself driving
+northward on Fifth Avenue in a hansom cab. She was in a pleasurable state
+of adventurous excitement, comparable to that Columbus must have felt
+when the shores of the Old World had disappeared below the horizon.
+During the fortnight we have skipped Honora had been to town several
+times, and had driven and walked through certain streets: inspiration,
+courage, and decision had all arrived at once this morning, when at the
+ferry she had given the cabman this particular address on Fifth Avenue.
+
+The cab, with the jerking and thumping peculiar to hansoms, made a circle
+and drew up at the curb. But even then a moment of irresolution
+intervened, and she sat staring through the little side window at the
+sign, T. Gerald Shorter, Real Estate, in neat gold letters over the
+basement floor of the building.
+
+"Here y'are, Miss," said the cabman through the hole in the roof.
+
+Honora descended, and was almost at the flight of steps leading down to
+the office door when a familiar figure appeared coming out of it. It was
+that of Mr. Toots Cuthbert, arrayed in a faultless morning suit, his tie
+delicately suggestive of falling leaves; and there dangled over his arm
+the slenderest of walking sticks.
+
+"Mrs. Spence!" he lisped, with every appearance of joy.
+
+"Mr. Cuthbert!" she cried.
+
+"Going in to see Jerry?" he inquired after he had put on his hat, nodding
+up at the sign.
+
+"I--that is, yes, I had thought of it," she answered.
+
+"Town house?" said Mr. Cuthbert, with a knowing smile.
+
+"I did have an idea of looking at houses," she confessed, somewhat taken
+aback.
+
+"I'm your man," announced Mr. Cuthbert.
+
+"You!" exclaimed Honora, with an air of considering the lilies of the
+field. But he did not seem to take offence.
+
+"That's my business," he proclaimed,--"when in town. Jerry gives me a
+commission. Come in and see him, while I get a list and some keys. By the
+way, you wouldn't object to telling him you were a friend of mine, would
+you?"
+
+"Not at all," said Honora, laughing.
+
+Mr. Shorter was a jovial gentleman in loose-fitting clothes, and he was
+exceedingly glad to meet Mr. Cuthbert's friend.
+
+"What kind of a house do you want, Mrs. Spence?" he asked. "Cuthbert
+tells me this morning that the Whitworth house has come into the market.
+You couldn't have a better location than that, on the Avenue between the
+Cathedral and the Park."
+
+"Oh," said Honora with a gasp, "that's much too expensive, I'm sure. And
+there are only two of us." She hesitated, a little alarmed at the
+rapidity with which affairs were proceeding, and added: "I ought to tell
+you that I've not really decided to take a house. I wished to--to see
+what there was to be had, and then I should have to consult my husband."
+
+She gazed very seriously into Mr. Shorter's brown eyes, which became very
+wide and serious, too. But all the time it seemed to her that other parts
+of him were laughing.
+
+"Husbands," he declared, "are kill-joys. What have they got to do with a
+house--except to sleep in it? Now I haven't the pleasure of knowing you
+as well as I hope to one of these days, Mrs. Spence--"
+
+"Oh, I say!" interrupted Mr. Cuthbert.
+
+"But I venture to predict, on a slight acquaintance," continued Mr.
+Shorter, undisturbed, "that you will pick out the house you want, and
+that your husband will move into it."
+
+Honora could not help laughing. And Mr. Shorter leaned back in his
+revolving chair and laughed, too, in so alarming a manner as to lead her
+to fear he would fall over backwards. But Mr. Cuthbert, who did not
+appear to perceive the humour in this conversation, extracted some keys
+and several pasteboard slips from a rack in the corner. Suddenly Mr.
+Shorter jerked himself upright again, and became very solemn.
+
+"Where's my hat?" he demanded.
+
+"What do you want with your hat?" Mr. Cuthbert inquired.
+
+"Why, I'm going with you, of course," Mr. Shorter replied. "I've decided
+to take a personal interest in this matter. You may regard my presence,
+Cuthbert, as justified by an artistic passion for my profession. I should
+never forgive myself if Mrs. Spence didn't get just the right house."
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I'll manage that all right. I thought you were
+going to see the representative of a syndicate at eleven."
+
+Mr. Shorter, with a sigh, acknowledged this necessity, and escorted
+Honora gallantly through the office and across the sidewalk to the
+waiting hansom. Cuthbert got in beside her.
+
+"Jerry's a joker," he observed as they drove off, "you mustn't mind him."
+
+"I think he's delightful," said Honora.
+
+"One wouldn't believe that a man of his size and appearance could be so
+fond of women," said Mr. Cuthbert. "He's the greatest old lady-killer
+that ever breathed. For two cents he would have come with us this
+morning, and let a five thousand dollar commission go. Do you know Mrs.
+Shorter?"
+
+"No," replied Honora. "She looks most attractive. I caught a glimpse of
+her at the polo that day with you."
+
+"I've been at her house in Newport ever since. Came down yesterday to try
+to earn some money," he continued, cheerfully making himself agreeable.
+"Deuced clever woman, much too clever for me and Jerry too. Always in a
+tete-a-tete with an antiquarian or a pathologist, or a psychologist, and
+tells novelists what to put into their next books and jurists how to
+decide cases. Full of modern and liberal ideas--believes in free love and
+all that sort of thing, and gives Jerry the dickens for practising it."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Honora.
+
+Mr. Cuthbert, however, did not appear to realize that he had shocked her.
+
+"By the way," he asked, "have you seen Cecil Grainger since the
+Quicksands game?"
+
+"No," she replied. "Has Mr. Grainger been at Quicksands since?"
+
+"Nobody knows where he's been," answered Mr. Cuthbert. "It's a mystery.
+He hasn't been home--at Newport, I mean-for a fortnight. He's never
+stayed away so long without letting any one know where he is. Naturally
+they thought he was at Mrs. Kame's in Banbury, but she hasn't laid eyes
+on him. It's a mystery. My own theory is that he went to sleep in a
+parlour car and was sent to the yards, and hasn't waked up."
+
+"And isn't Mrs. Grainger worried?" asked Honora.
+
+"Oh, you never can tell anything about her," he said. "Do you know her?
+She's a sphinx. All the Pendletons are Stoics. And besides, she's been so
+busy with this Charities Conference that she hasn't had time to think of
+Cecil. Who's that?"
+
+"That" was a lady from Rivington, one of Honora's former neighbours, to
+whom she had bowed. Life, indeed, is full of contrasts. Mr. Cuthbert,
+too, was continually bowing and waving to acquaintances on the Avenue.
+
+Thus pleasantly conversing, they arrived at the first house on the list,
+and afterwards went through a succession of them. Once inside, Honora
+would look helplessly about her in the darkness while her escort would
+raise the shades, admitting a gloomy light on bare interiors or shrouded
+furniture.
+
+And the rents: Four, five, six, and seven and eight thousand dollars a
+year. Pride prevented her from discussing these prices with Mr. Cuthbert;
+and in truth, when lunch time came, she had seen nothing which realized
+her somewhat vague but persistent ideals.
+
+"I'm so much obliged to you," she said, "and I hope you'll forgive me for
+wasting your time."
+
+Mr. Cuthbert smiled broadly, and Honora smiled too.
+
+Indeed, there was something ludicrous in the remark. He assumed an
+attitude of reflection.
+
+"I imagine you wouldn't care to go over beyond Lexington Avenue, would
+you? I didn't think to ask you."
+
+"No," she replied, blushing a little, "I shouldn't care to go over as far
+as that."
+
+He pondered a while longer, when suddenly his face lighted up.
+
+"I've got it!" he cried, "the very thing--why didn't. I think of it?
+Dicky Farnham's house, or rather his wife's house. I'll get it straight
+after a while,--she isn't his wife any more, you know; she married
+Eustace Rindge last month. That's the reason it's for rent. Dicky says
+he'll never get married again--you bet! They planned it together, laid
+the corner-stone and all that sort of thing, and before it was finished
+she had a divorce and had gone abroad with Rindge. I saw her before she
+sailed, and she begged me to rent it. But it isn't furnished."
+
+"I might look at it," said Honora, dubiously.
+
+"I'm sure it will just suit you," he declared with enthusiasm. "It's a
+real find. We'll drive around by the office and get the keys."
+
+The house was between Fifth Avenue and Madison, on a cross street not far
+below Fifty-Ninth, and Honora had scarcely entered the little
+oak-panelled hall before she had forgotten that Mr. Cuthbert was a real
+estate agent--a most difficult thing to remember.
+
+Upstairs, the drawing-room was flooded with sunlight that poured in
+through a window with stone mullions and leaded panes extending the
+entire width of the house. Against the wall stood a huge stone mantel of
+the Tudor period, and the ceiling was of wood. Behind the little hall a
+cosey library lighted by a well, and behind that an ample dining-room.
+And Honora remembered to have seen, in a shop on Fourth Avenue, just the
+sideboard for such a setting.
+
+On the third floor, as Mr. Cuthbert pointed out, there was a bedroom and
+boudoir for Mrs. Spence, and a bedroom and dressing-room for Mr. Spence.
+Into the domestic arrangement of the house, however important, we need
+not penetrate. The rent was eight thousand dollars, which Mr. Cuthbert
+thought extremely reasonable.
+
+"Eight thousand dollars!" As she stood with her back turned, looking out
+on the street, some trick of memory brought into her mind the fact that
+she had once heard her uncle declare that he had bought his house and lot
+for that exact sum. And as cashier of Mr. Isham's bank, he did not earn
+so much in a year.
+
+She had found the house, indeed, but the other and mightier half of the
+task remained, of getting Howard into it. In the consideration of this
+most difficult of problems Honora, who in her exaltation had beheld
+herself installed in every room, grew suddenly serious. She was startled
+out of her reflections by a remark of almost uncanny penetration on the
+part of Mr. Cuthbert.
+
+"Oh, he'll come round all right, when he sees the house," that young
+gentleman declared.
+
+Honora turned quickly, and, after a moment of astonishment, laughed in
+spite of herself. It was impossible not to laugh with Mr. Cuthbert, so
+irresistible and debonair was he, so confiding and sympathetic, that he
+became; before one knew it, an accomplice. Had he not poured out to
+Honora, with a charming gayety and frankness, many of his financial
+troubles?
+
+"I'm afraid he'll think it frightfully expensive," she answered, becoming
+thoughtful once more. And it did not occur to her that neither of them
+had mentioned the individual to whom they referred.
+
+"Wait until he's feeling tiptop," Mr. Cuthbert advised, "and then bring
+him up here in a hurry. I say, I hope you do take the house," he added,
+with a boyish seriousness after she had refused his appeal to lunch with
+him, "and that you will let me come and see you once in a while."
+
+She lunched alone, in a quiet corner of the dining-room of one of the
+large hotels, gazing at intervals absently out of the window. And by the
+middle of the afternoon she found herself, quite unexpectedly, in the
+antique furniture shop, gazing at the sideboard and a set of
+leather-seated Jacobean chairs, and bribing the dealer with a smile to
+hold them for a few days until she could decide whether she wished them.
+In a similar mood of abstraction she boarded the ferry, but it was not
+until the boat had started on its journey that she became aware of a
+trim, familiar figure in front of her, silhouetted against the ruffed
+blue waters of the river--Trixton Brent's. And presently, as though the
+concentration of her thoughts upon his back had summoned him, he turned.
+
+"Where have you been all this time?" she asked. "I haven't seen you for
+an age."
+
+"To Seattle."
+
+"To Seattle!" she exclaimed. "What were you doing there?"
+
+"Trying to forget you," he replied promptly, "and incidentally attempting
+to obtain control of some properties. Both efforts, I may add, were
+unsuccessful."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Honora.
+
+"And what mischief," he demanded, "have you been up to?"
+
+"You'll never guess!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Preparing for the exodus," he hazarded.
+
+"You surely don't expect me to stay in Quicksands all winter?" she
+replied, a little guiltily.
+
+"Quicksands," he declared, "has passed into history."
+
+"You always insist upon putting a wrong interpretation upon what I do,"
+she complained.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"What interpretation do you put on it?" he asked.
+
+"A most natural and praiseworthy one," she answered. "Education,
+improvement, growth--these things are as necessary for a woman as for a
+man. Of course I don't expect you to believe that--your idea of women not
+being a very exalted one."
+
+He did not reply, for at that instant the bell rang, the passengers
+pressed forward about them, and they were soon in the midst of the
+confusion of a landing. It was not until they were seated in adjoining
+chairs of the parlour-car that the conversation was renewed.
+
+"When do you move to town?" he inquired.
+
+However simple Mr. Brent's methods of reasoning may appear to others, his
+apparent clairvoyance never failed to startle Honora.
+
+"Somebody has told you that I've been looking at houses!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Have you found one?"
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"Yes--I have found one. It belongs to some people named Farnham--they're
+divorced."
+
+"Dicky Farnham's ex-wife," he supplied. "I know where it is
+--unexceptionable neighbourhood and all that sort of thing."
+
+"And it's just finished," continued Honora, her enthusiasm gaining on her
+as she spoke of the object which had possessed her mind for four hours.
+"It's the most enchanting house, and so sunny for New York. If I had
+built it myself it could not have suited me better. Only--"
+
+"Only--" repeated Trixton Brent, smiling.
+
+"Well," she said slowly, "I really oughtn't to talk about it. I--I
+haven't said anything to Howard yet, and he may not like it. I ran across
+it by the merest accident."
+
+"What will you give me," he said, "if I can induce Howard to like it?"
+
+"My eternal friendship," she laughed.
+
+"That's not enough," said Trixton Brent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+INTRODUCING A REVOLUTIONIZING VEHICLE
+
+"Howard," said Honora that evening, "I've been going through houses
+to-day."
+
+"Houses!" he exclaimed, looking up from his newspaper.
+
+"And I've been most fortunate," she continued. "I found one that Mrs.
+Farnham built--she is now Mrs. Rindge. It is just finished, and so
+attractive. If I'd looked until doomsday I couldn't have done any
+better."
+
+"But great Scott!" he ejaculated, "what put the notion of a town house
+into your head?"
+
+"Isn't it high time to be thinking of the winter?" she asked. "It's
+nearly the end of September."
+
+He was inarticulate for a few moments, in an evident desperate attempt to
+rally his forces to meet such an unforeseen attack.
+
+"Who said anything about going to town?" he inquired.
+
+"Now, Howard, don't be foolish," she replied. "Surely you didn't expect
+to stay in Quicksands all winter?"
+
+"Foolish!" he repeated, and added inconsequently, "why not?"
+
+"Because," said Honora, calmly, "I have a life to lead as well as you."
+
+"But you weren't satisfied until you got to Quicksands, and now you want
+to leave it."
+
+"I didn't bargain to stay here in the winter," she declared. "You know
+very well that if you were unfortunate it would be different. But you're
+quite prosperous."
+
+"How do you know?" he demanded unguardedly.
+
+"Quicksands tells me," she said. "It is--a little humiliating not to have
+more of your confidence, and to hear such things from outsiders."
+
+"You never seemed interested in business matters," he answered uneasily.
+
+"I should be," said Honora, "if you would only take the trouble to tell
+me about them." She stood up. "Howard, can't you see that it is making
+us--grow apart? If you won't tell me about yourself and what you're
+doing, you drive me to other interests. I am your wife, and I ought to
+know--I want to know. The reason I don't understand is because you've
+never taken the trouble to teach me. I wish to lead my own life, it is
+true--to develop. I don't want to be like these other women down here.
+I--I was made for something better. I'm sure of it. But I wish my life to
+be joined to yours, too--and it doesn't seem to be. And sometimes--I'm
+afraid I can't explain it to you--sometimes I feel lonely and frightened,
+as though I might do something desperate. And I don't know what's going
+to become of me."
+
+He laid down his newspaper and stared at her helplessly, with the air of
+a man who suddenly finds himself at sea in a small boat without oars.
+
+"Oh, you can't understand!" she cried. "I might have known you never
+could."
+
+He was, indeed, thoroughly perplexed and uncomfortable: unhappy might not
+be too strong a word. He got up awkwardly and put his hand on her arm.
+She did not respond. He drew her, limp and unresisting, down on the
+lounge beside him.
+
+"For heaven's sake, what is the matter, Honora?" he faltered. "I--I
+thought we were happy. You were getting on all right, and seemed to be
+having a good time down here. You never said anything about--this."
+
+She turned her head and looked at him--a long, searching look with
+widened eyes.
+
+"No," she said slowly, "you don't understand. I suppose it isn't your
+fault."
+
+"I'll try," he said, "I don't like to see you--upset like this. I'll do
+anything I can to make you happy."
+
+"Not things, not--not toys," Trixton Brent's expression involuntarily
+coming to her lips. "Oh, can't you see I'm not that kind of a woman? I
+don't want to be bought. I want you, whatever you are, if you are. I want
+to be saved. Take care of me--see a little more of me--be a little
+interested in what I think. God gave me a mind, and--other men have
+discovered it. You don't know, you can't know, what temptations you
+subject me to. It isn't right, Howard. And oh, it is humiliating not to
+be able to interest one's husband."
+
+"But you do interest me," he protested.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Not so much as your business," she said; "not nearly so much."
+
+"Perhaps I have been too absorbed," he confessed. "One thing has followed
+another. I didn't suspect that you felt this way. Come, I'll try to brace
+up." He pressed her to him. "Don't feel badly. You're overwrought. You've
+exaggerated the situation, Honora. We'll go in on the eight o'clock train
+together and look at the house--although I'm afraid it's a little steep,"
+he added cautiously.
+
+"I don't care anything about the house," said Honora. "I don't want it."
+
+"There!" he said soothingly, "you'll feel differently in the morning.
+We'll go and look at it, anyway."
+
+Her quick ear, however, detected an undertone which, if not precisely
+resentment, was akin to the vexation that an elderly gentleman might be
+justified in feeling who has taken the same walk for twenty years, and is
+one day struck by a falling brick. Howard had not thought of consulting
+her in regard to remaining all winter in Quicksands. And, although he
+might not realize it himself, if he should consent to go to New York one
+reason for his acquiescence would be that the country in winter offered a
+more or less favourable atmosphere for the recurrence of similar
+unpleasant and unaccountable domestic convulsions. Business demands peace
+at any price. And the ultimatum at Rivington, though delivered in so
+different a manner, recurred to him.
+
+The morning sunlight, as is well known, is a dispeller of moods, a
+disintegrator of the night's fantasies. It awoke Honora at what for her
+was a comparatively early hour, and as she dressed rapidly she heard her
+husband whistling in his room. It is idle to speculate on the phenomenon
+taking place within her, and it may merely be remarked in passing that
+she possessed a quality which, in a man, leads to a career and fame.
+Unimagined numbers of America's women possess that quality--a fact that
+is becoming more and more apparent every day.
+
+"Why, Honora!" Howard exclaimed, as she appeared at the breakfast table.
+"What's happened to you?"
+
+"Have you forgotten already," she asked, smilingly, as she poured out her
+coffee, "that we are going to town together?"
+
+He readjusted his newspaper against the carafe.
+
+"How much do you think Mrs. Farnham--or Mrs. Rindge--is worth?" he asked.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," she replied.
+
+"Old Marshall left her five million dollars."
+
+"What has that to do with it?" inquired Honora.
+
+"She isn't going to rent, especially in that part of town, for nothing."
+
+"Wouldn't it be wiser, Howard, to wait and see the house. You know you
+proposed it yourself, and it won't take very much of your time."
+
+He returned to a perusal of the financial column, but his eye from time
+to time wandered from the sheet to his wife, who was reading her letters.
+
+"Howard," she said, "I feel dreadfully about Mrs. Holt. We haven't been
+at Silverdale all summer. Here's a note from her saying she'll be in town
+to-morrow for the Charities Conference, asking me to come to see her at
+her hotel. I think I'll go to Silverdale a little later."
+
+"Why don't you?" he said. "It would do you good."
+
+"And you?" she asked.
+
+"My only day of the week is Sunday, Honora. You know that. And I wouldn't
+spend another day at Silverdale if they gave me a deed to the property,"
+he declared.
+
+On the train, when Howard had returned from the smoking car and they were
+about to disembark at Long Island City, they encountered Mr. Trixton
+Brent.
+
+"Whither away?" he cried in apparent astonishment. "Up at dawn, and the
+eight o'clock train!"
+
+"We were going to look at a house," explained Honora, "and Howard has no
+other time."
+
+"I'll go, too," declared Mr. Brent, promptly. "You mightn't think me a
+judge of houses, but I am. I've lived in so many bad ones that I know a
+good one when I see it now."
+
+"Honora has got a wild notion into her head that I'm going to take the
+Farnham house," said Howard, smiling. There, on the deck of the
+ferryboat, in the flooding sunlight, the idea seemed to give him
+amusement. With the morning light Pharaoh must have hardened his heart.
+
+"Well, perhaps you are," said Mr. Brent, conveying to Honora his delight
+in the situation by a scarcely perceptible wink. "I shouldn't like to
+take the other end of the bet. Why shouldn't you? You're fat and healthy
+and making money faster than you can gather it in."
+
+Howard coughed, and laughed a little, uncomfortably. Trixton Brent was
+not a man to offend.
+
+"Honora has got that delusion, too," he replied. He steeled himself in
+his usual manner for the ordeal to come by smoking a cigarette, for the
+arrival of such a powerful ally on his wife's side lent a different
+aspect to the situation.
+
+Honora, during this colloquy, was silent. She was a little uncomfortable,
+and pretended not to see Mr. Brent's wink.
+
+"Incredible as it may seem, I expected to have my automobile ready this
+morning," he observed; "we might have gone in that. It landed three days
+ago, but so far it has failed to do anything but fire off revolver
+shots."
+
+"Oh, I do wish you had it," said Honora, relieved by the change of
+subject. "To drive in one must be such a wonderful sensation."
+
+"I'll let you know when it stops shooting up the garage and consents to
+move out," he said. "I'll take you down to Quicksands in it."
+
+The prospective arrival of Mr. Brent's French motor car, which was looked
+for daily, had indeed been one of the chief topics of conversation at
+Quicksands that summer. He could appear at no lunch or dinner party
+without being subjected to a shower of questions as to where it was, and
+as many as half a dozen different women among whom was Mrs. Chandos
+--declared that he had promised to bring them out from New York on the
+occasion of its triumphal entry into the colony. Honora, needless to say,
+had betrayed no curiosity.
+
+Neither Mr. Shorter nor Mr. Cuthbert had appeared at the real estate
+office when, at a little after nine o'clock; Honora asked for the keys.
+And an office boy, perched on the box seat of the carriage, drove with
+them to the house and opened the wrought-iron gate that guarded the
+entrance, and the massive front door. Honora had a sense of unreality as
+they entered, and told herself it was obviously ridiculous that she
+should aspire to such a dwelling. Yesterday, under the spell of that
+somewhat adventurous excursion with Mr. Cuthbert, she had pictured
+herself as installed. He had contrived somehow to give her a sense of
+intimacy with the people who lived thereabout--his own friends.
+
+Perhaps it was her husband who was the disillusionizing note as he stood
+on the polished floor of the sunflooded drawing-room. Although bare of
+furniture, it was eloquent to Honora of a kind of taste not to be found
+at Quicksands: it carried her back, by undiscernible channels of thought,
+to the impression which, in her childhood, the Hanbury mansion had always
+made. Howard, in her present whimsical fancy, even seemed a little
+grotesque in such a setting. His inevitable pink shirt and obviously
+prosperous clothes made discord there, and she knew in this moment that
+he was appraising the house from a commercial standpoint. His comment
+confirmed her guess.
+
+"If I were starting out to blow myself, or you, Honora," he said, poking
+with his stick a marmouset of the carved stone mantel, "I'd get a little
+more for my money while I was about it."
+
+Honora did not reply. She looked out of the window instead.
+
+"See here, old man," said Trixton Brent, "I'm not a real estate dealer or
+an architect, but if I were in your place I'd take that carriage and
+hustle over to Jerry Shorter's as fast as I could and sign the lease."
+
+Howard looked at him in some surprise, as one who had learned that
+Trixton Brent's opinions were usually worth listening to.
+Characteristically, he did not like to display his ignorance.
+
+"I know what you mean, Brent," he replied, "and there may be something to
+the argument. It gives an idea of conservativeness and prosperity."
+
+"You've made a bull's-eye," said Trixton Brent, succinctly.
+
+"But--but I'm not ready to begin on this scale," objected Howard.
+
+"Why," cried Brent, with evident zest--for he was a man who enjoyed sport
+in all its forms, even to baiting the husbands of his friends,--"when I
+first set eyes on you, old fellow, I thought you knew a thing or two, and
+you've made a few turns since that confirmed the opinion. But I'm
+beginning to perceive that you have limitations. I could sit down here
+now, if there were any place to sit, and calculate how much living in
+this house would be worth to me in Wall Street."
+
+Honora, who had been listening uneasily, knew that a shrewder or more
+disturbing argument could not have been used on her husband; and it came
+from Trixton Brent--to Howard at least--ex cathedra. She was filled with
+a sense of shame, which was due not solely to the fact that she was a
+little conscience-stricken because of her innocent complicity, nor that
+her husband did not resent an obvious attempt of a high-handed man to
+browbeat him; but also to the feeling that the character of the
+discussion had in some strange way degraded the house itself. Why was it
+that everything she touched seemed to become contaminated?
+
+"There's no use staying any longer," she said. "Howard doesn't like it."
+
+"I didn't say so," he interrupted. "There's something about the place
+that grows on you. If I felt I could afford it--"
+
+"At any rate," declared Honora, trying to control her voice, "I've
+decided, now I've seen it a second time, that I don't want it. I only
+wished him to look at it," she added, scornfully aware that she was
+taking up the cudgels in his behalf. But she could not bring herself, in
+Brent's presence, to declare that the argument of the rent seemed
+decisive.
+
+Her exasperation was somewhat increased by the expression on Trixton
+Brent's face, which plainly declared that he deemed her last remarks to
+be the quintessence of tactics; and he obstinately refused, as they went
+down the stairs to the street, to regard the matter as closed.
+
+"I'll take him down town in the Elevated," he said, as he put her into
+the carriage. "The first round's a draw."
+
+She directed the driver to the ferry again, and went back to Quicksands.
+Several times during the day she was on the point of telephoning Brent
+not to try to persuade Howard to rent the house, and once she even got so
+far as to take down the receiver. But when she reflected, it seemed an
+impossible thing to do. At four o'clock she herself was called to the
+telephone by Mr. Cray, a confidential clerk in Howard's office, who
+informed her that her husband had been obliged to leave town suddenly on
+business, and would not be home that night.
+
+"Didn't he say where he was going?" asked Honora.
+
+"He didn't even tell me, Mrs. Spence," Cray replied, and Mr. Dallam
+doesn't know."
+
+"Oh, dear," said Honora, "I hope he realizes that people are coming for
+dinner to-morrow evening."
+
+"I'm positive, from what he said, that he'll be back some time
+to-morrow," Cray reassured her.
+
+She refused an invitation to dine out, and retired shortly after her own
+dinner with a novel so distracting that she gradually regained an equable
+frame of mind. The uneasiness, the vague fear of the future, wore away,
+and she slept peacefully. In the morning, however; she found on her
+breakfast tray a note from Trixton Brent.
+
+Her first feeling after reading it was one of relief that he had not
+mentioned the house. He had written from a New York club, asking her to
+lunch with him at Delmonico's that day and drive home in the motor. No
+answer was required: if she did not appear at one o'clock, he would know
+she couldn't come.
+
+Honora took the eleven o'clock train, which gave her an hour after she
+arrived in New York to do as she pleased. Her first idea, as she stood
+for a moment amidst the clamour of the traffic in front of the ferry
+house, was to call on Mrs. Holt at that lady's hotel; and then she
+remembered that the Charities Conference began at eleven, and decided to
+pay a visit to Madame Dumond, who made a specialty of importing novelties
+in dress. Her costume for the prospective excursion in the automobile had
+cost Honora some thought that morning. As the day was cool, she had
+brought along an ulster that was irreproachable. But how about the hat
+and veil?
+
+Madame Dumond was enchanted. She had them both,--she had landed with them
+only last week. She tried them on Honora, and stood back with her hands
+clasped in an ecstasy she did not attempt to hide. What a satisfaction to
+sell things to Mrs. Spence! Some ladies she could mention would look like
+frights in them, but Madame Spence had 'de la race'. She could wear
+anything that was chic. The hat and veil, said Madame, with a simper,
+were sixty dollars.
+
+"Sixty dollars!" exclaimed Honora.
+
+"Ah, madame, what would you?" Novelties were novelties, the United States
+Custom authorities robbers.
+
+Having attended to these important details, Honora drove to the
+restaurant in her hansom cab, the blood coursing pleasantly in her veins.
+The autumn air sparkled, and New York was showing signs of animation. She
+glanced furtively into the little mirror at the side. Her veil was grey,
+and with the hat gave her somewhat the air of a religieuse, an aspect
+heightened by the perfect oval of her face; and something akin to a
+religious thrill ran through her.
+
+The automobile, with its brass and varnish shining in the sunlight, was
+waiting a little way up the street, and the first person Honora met in
+the vestibule of Delmonico's was Lula Chandos. She was, as usual,
+elaborately dressed, and gave one the impression of being lost, so
+anxiously was she scanning the face of every new arrival.
+
+"Oh, my dear," she cried, staring hard at the hat and the veil, "have you
+seen Clara Trowbridge anywhere?"
+
+A certain pity possessed Honora as she shook her head.
+
+"She was in town this morning," continued Mrs. Chandos, "and I was sure
+she was coming here to lunch. Trixy just drove up a moment ago in his new
+car. Did you see it?"
+
+Honora's pity turned into a definite contempt.
+
+"I saw an automobile as I came in," she said, but the brevity of her
+reply seemed to have no effect upon Mrs. Chandos.
+
+"There he is now, at the entrance to the cafe," she exclaimed.
+
+There, indeed, was Trixton Brent, staring at them from the end of the
+hall, and making no attempt to approach them.
+
+"I think I'll go into the dressing-room and leave my coat," said Honora,
+outwardly calm but inwardly desperate. Fortunately, Lula made no attempt
+to follow her.
+
+"You're a dream in that veil, my dear," Mrs. Chandos called after her.
+"Don't forget that we're all dining with you to-night in Quicksands."
+
+Once in the dressing-room, Honora felt like locking the doors and jumping
+out of the window. She gave her coat to the maid, rearranged her hair
+without any apparent reason, and was leisurely putting on her hat again,
+and wondering what she would do next, when Mrs. Kame appeared.
+
+"Trixy asked me to get you," she explained. "Mr. Grainger and I are going
+to lunch with you."
+
+"How nice!" said Honora, with such a distinct emphasis of relief that
+Mrs. Kame looked at her queerly.
+
+"What a fool Trixy was, with all his experience, to get mixed up with
+that Chandos woman," that lady remarked as they passed through the
+hallway. "She's like molasses--one can never get her off. Lucky thing he
+found Cecil and me here. There's your persistent friend, Trixy," she
+added, when they were seated. "Really, this is pathetic, when an
+invitation to lunch and a drive in your car would have made her so
+happy."
+
+Honora looked around and beheld, indeed, Mrs. Chandos and two other
+Quicksands women, Mrs. Randall and Mrs. Barclay, at a table in the corner
+of the room.
+
+"Where's Bessie to-day, Cecil--or do you know?" demanded Mrs. Kame, after
+an amused glance at Brent, who had not deigned to answer her. "I promised
+to go to Newport with her at the end of the week, but I haven't been able
+to find her."
+
+"Cecil doesn't know," said Trixton Brent. "The police have been looking
+for him for a fortnight. Where the deuce have you been, Cecil?"
+
+"To the Adirondacks," replied Mr Grainger, gravely.
+
+This explanation, which seemed entirely plausible to Honora, appeared to
+afford great amusement to Brent, and even to Mrs. Kame.
+
+"When did you come to life?" demanded Brent.
+
+"Yesterday," said Mr. Grainger, quite as solemnly as before.
+
+Mrs. Kame glanced curiously at Honora, and laughed again.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Trixy," she said.
+
+"Why?" he asked innocently. "There's nothing wrong in going to the
+Adirondacks--is there, Cecil?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Grainger, blinking rapidly.
+
+"The Adirondacks," declared Mrs. Kame, "have now become classic."
+
+"By the way," observed Mr. Grainger, "I believe Bessie's in town to-day
+at a charity pow-wow, reading a paper. I've half a mind to go over and
+listen to it. The white dove of peace--and all that kind of thing."
+
+"You'd go to sleep and spoil it all," said Brent.
+
+"But you can't, Cecil!" cried Mrs. Kame. "Don't you remember we're going
+to Westchester to the Faunces' to spend the night and play bridge? And we
+promised to arrive early."
+
+"That's so, by George," said Mr. Grainger, and he drank the rest of his
+whiskey-and-soda.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do, if Mrs. Spence is willing," suggested Brent.
+"If you start right after lunch, I'll take you out. We'll have plenty of
+time," he added to Honora, "to get back to Quicksands for dinner."
+
+"Are you sure?" she asked anxiously. "I have people for dinner tonight."
+
+"Oh, lots of time," declared Mrs. Kame. "Trixy's car is some unheard-of
+horse-power. It's only twenty-five miles to the Faunces', and you'll be
+back at the ferry by half-past four."
+
+"Easily," said Trixton Brent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ON THE ART OF LION TAMING
+
+After lunch, while Mrs. Kame was telephoning to her maid and Mr. Grainger
+to Mrs. Faunce, Honora found herself alone with Trixton Brent in the
+automobile at a moment when the Quicksands party were taking a cab. Mrs.
+Chandos parsed long enough to wave her hand.
+
+"Bon voyage!" she cried. "What an ideal party! and the chauffeur doesn't
+understand English. If you don't turn up this evening, Honora, I'll
+entertain your guests."
+
+"We must get back," said Honora, involuntarily to Brent. "It would be too
+dreadful if we didn't!"
+
+"Are you afraid I'll run off with you?" he asked.
+
+"I believe you're perfectly capable of it," she replied. "If I were wise,
+I'd take the train."
+
+"Why don't you?" he demanded.
+
+She smiled.
+
+"I don't know. It's because of your deteriorating influence, I suppose.
+And yet I trust you, in spite of my instincts and--my eyes. I'm seriously
+put out with you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'll tell you later, if you're at a loss," she said, as Mrs. Kame and
+Mr. Grainger appeared.
+
+Eight years have elapsed since that day and this writing--an aeon in this
+rapidly moving Republic of ours. The roads, although far from perfect
+yet, were not then what they have since become. But the weather was dry
+and the voyage to Westchester accomplished successfully. It was half-past
+three when they drove up the avenue and deposited Mrs. Kame and Cecil
+Grainger at the long front of the Faunce house: and Brent, who had been
+driving, relinquished the wheel to the chauffeur and joined Honora in the
+tonneau. The day was perfect, the woods still heavy with summer foliage,
+and the only signs of autumn were the hay mounds and the yellowing
+cornstalks stacked amidst the stubble of the fields.
+
+Brent sat silently watching her, for she had raised her veil in saying
+good-by to Mrs. Kame, and--as the chauffeur was proceeding slowly--had
+not lowered it. Suddenly she turned and looked him full in the face.
+
+"What kind of woman do you think I am?" she demanded.
+
+"That's rather a big order, isn't it?" he said.
+
+"I'm perfectly serious," continued Honora, slowly.
+
+"I'd really like to know."
+
+"Before I begin on the somewhat lengthy list of your qualities," he
+replied, smiling, "may I ask why you'd like to know?"
+
+"Yes," she said quickly. "I'd like to know because I think you've
+misjudged me. I was really more angry than you have any idea of at the
+manner in which you talked to Howard. And did you seriously suppose that
+I was in earnest when we spoke about your assistance in persuading him to
+take the house?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"You are either the cleverest woman in the world," he declared, "or else
+you oughtn't to be out without a guardian. And no judge in possession of
+his five senses would appoint your husband."
+
+Indignant as she was, she could not resist smiling. There was something
+in the way Brent made such remarks that fascinated her.
+
+"I shouldn't call you precisely eligible, either," she retorted.
+
+He laughed again. But his eyes made her vaguely uneasy.
+
+"Are these harsh words the reward for my charity? he asked.
+
+"I'm by no means sure it's charity," she said. "That's what is troubling
+me. And you have no right to say such things about my husband."
+
+"How was I to know you were sensitive on the subject? he replied.
+
+"I wonder what it would be like to be so utterly cynical as you," she
+said.
+
+"Do you mean to say you don't want the house?"
+
+"I don't want it under those conditions," she answered with spirit. "I
+didn't expect to be taken literally. And you've always insisted," she
+added, "in ascribing to me motives that--that never occurred to me. You
+make the mistake of thinking that because you have no ideals, other
+people haven't. I hope Howard hasn't said he'd take the house. He's gone
+off somewhere, and I haven't been able to see him."
+
+Trixton Brent looked at her queerly.
+
+"After that last manoeuvre of yours," he said, "it was all I could do to
+prevent him from rushing over to Jerry Shorter's--and signing the lease."
+
+She did not reply.
+
+"What do these sudden, virtuous resolutions mean?" he asked. "Resignation?
+Quicksands for life? Abandonment of the whole campaign?"
+
+"There isn't any I campaign," she said--and her voice caught in something
+like a sob. "I'm not that sordid kind of a person. And if I don't like
+Quicksands, it's because the whole atmosphere seems to be charged with
+--with just such a spirit."
+
+Her hand was lying on the seat. He covered it with his own so quickly
+that she left it there for a moment, as though paralyzed, while she
+listened to the first serious words he had ever addressed to her.
+
+"Honora, I admire you more than any woman I have ever known," he said.
+
+Her breath came quickly, and she drew her hand away.
+
+"I suppose I ought to feel complimented," she replied.
+
+At this crucial instant what had been a gliding flight of the automobile
+became, suddenly, a more or less uneven and jerky progress, accompanied
+by violent explosions. At the first of these Honora, in alarm, leaped to
+her feet. And the machine, after what seemed an heroic attempt to
+continue, came to a dead stop. They were on the outskirts of a village;
+children coming home from school surrounded them in a ring. Brent jumped
+out, the chauffeur opened the hood, and they peered together into what
+was, to Honora, an inexplicable tangle of machinery. There followed a
+colloquy, in technical French, between the master and the man.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Honora, anxiously.
+
+"Nothing much," said Brent, "spark-plugs. We'll fix it up in a few
+minutes." He looked with some annoyance at the gathering crowd. "Stand
+back a little, can't you?" he cried, "and give us room."
+
+After some minutes spent in wiping greasy pieces of steel which the
+chauffeur extracted, and subsequent ceaseless grinding on the crank, the
+engine started again, not without a series of protesting cracks like
+pistol shots. The chauffeur and Brent leaped in, the bystanders parted
+with derisive cheers, and away they went through the village, only to
+announce by another series of explosions a second disaster at the other
+end of the street. A crowd collected there, too.
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Honora, "don't you think we ought to take the train, Mr.
+Brent? If I were to miss a dinner at my own house, it would be too
+terrible!"
+
+"There's nothing to worry about," he assured her. "Nothing broken. It's
+only the igniting system that needs adjustment."
+
+Although this was so much Greek to Honora, she was reassured. Trixton
+Brent inspired confidence. There was another argument with the chauffeur,
+a little more animated than the first; more greasy plugs taken out and
+wiped, and a sharper exchange of compliments with the crowd; more
+grinding, until the chauffeur's face was steeped in perspiration, and
+more pistol shots. They were off again, but lamely, spurting a little at
+times, and again slowing down to the pace of an ox-cart. Their progress
+became a series of illustrations of the fable of the hare and the
+tortoise. They passed horses, and the horses shied into the ditch: then
+the same horses passed them, usually at the periods chosen by the demon
+under the hood to fire its pistol shots, and into the ditch went the
+horses once more, their owners expressing their thoughts in language at
+once vivid and unrestrained.
+
+It is one of the blessed compensations of life that in times of
+prosperity we do not remember our miseries. In these enlightened days,
+when everybody owns an automobile and calmly travels from Chicago to
+Boston if he chooses, we have forgotten the dark ages when these machines
+were possessed by devils: when it took sometimes as much as three hours
+to go twenty miles, and often longer than that. How many of us have had
+the same experience as Honora!
+
+She was always going to take the train, and didn't. Whenever her mind was
+irrevocably made up, the automobile whirled away on all four cylinders
+for a half a mile or so, until they were out of reach of the railroad.
+There were trolley cars, to be sure, but those took forever to get
+anywhere. Four o'clock struck, five and six, when at last the fiend who
+had conspired with fate, having accomplished his evident purpose of
+compelling Honora to miss her dinner, finally abandoned them as suddenly
+and mysteriously as he had come, and the automobile was a lamb once more.
+It was half-past six, and the sun had set, before they saw the lights
+twinkling all yellow on the heights of Fort George. At that hour the last
+train they could have taken to reach the dinner-party in time was leaving
+the New York side of the ferry.
+
+"What will they think?" cried Honora. "They saw us leave Delmonico's at
+two o'clock, and they didn't know we were going to Westchester."
+
+It needed no very vivid imagination to summon up the probable remarks of
+Mrs. Chandos on the affair. It was all very well to say the motor broke
+down; but unfortunately Trixton Brent's reputation was not much better
+than that of his car.
+
+Trixton Brent, as might have been expected, was inclined to treat the
+matter as a joke.
+
+"There's nothing very formal about a Quicksands dinner-party," he said.
+"We'll have a cosey little dinner in town, and call 'em up on the
+telephone."
+
+She herself was surprised at the spirit of recklessness stealing over
+her, for there was, after all, a certain appealing glamour in the
+adventure. She was thrilled by the swift, gliding motion of the
+automobile, the weird and unfamiliar character of these upper reaches of
+a great city in the twilight, where new houses stood alone or m rows on
+wide levelled tracts; and old houses, once in the country, were seen high
+above the roadway behind crumbling fences, surrounded by gloomy old trees
+with rotting branches. She stole a glance at the man close beside her; a
+delightful fear of him made her shiver, and she shrank closer into the
+corner of the seat.
+
+"Honora!"
+
+All at once he had seized her hand again, and held it in spite of her
+efforts to release it.
+
+"Honora," he said, "I love you as I have never loved in my life. As I
+never shall love again."
+
+"Oh--you mustn't say that!" she cried.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded. "Why not, if I feel it?"
+
+"Because," faltered Honora, "because I can't listen to you."
+
+Brent made a motion of disdain with his free hand.
+
+"I don't pretend that it's right," he said. "I'm not a hypocrite, anyway,
+thank God! It's undoubtedly wrong, according to all moral codes. I've
+never paid any attention to them. You're married. I'm happy to say I'm
+divorced. You've got a husband. I won't be guilty of the bad taste of
+discussing him. He's a good fellow enough, but he never thinks about you
+from the time the Exchange opens in the morning until he gets home at
+night and wants his dinner. You don't love him--it would be a miracle if
+a woman with any spirit did. He hasn't any more of an idea of what he
+possesses by legal right than the man I discovered driving in a cart one
+of the best hunters I ever had in my stables. To say that he doesn't
+appreciate you is a ludicrous understatement. Any woman would have done
+for him."
+
+"Please don't!" she implored him. "Please don't!"
+
+But for the moment she knew that she was powerless, carried along like a
+chip on the crest of his passion.
+
+"I don't pretend to say how it is, or why it is," he went on, paying no
+heed to her protests. "I suppose there's one woman for every man in the
+world--though I didn't use to think so. I always had another idea of
+woman before I met you. I've thought I was in love with 'em, but now I
+understand it was only--something else. I say, I don't know what it is in
+you that makes me feel differently. I can't analyze it, and I don't want
+to. You're not perfect, by a good deal, and God knows I'm not. You're
+ambitious, but if you weren't, you'd be humdrum--yet there's no pitiful
+artifice in you as in other women that any idiot can see through. And it
+would have paralyzed forever any ordinary woman to have married Howard
+Spence."
+
+A new method of wooing, surely, and evidently peculiar to Trixton Brent.
+Honora, in the prey of emotions which he had aroused in spite of her,
+needless to say did not, at that moment, perceive the humour in it. His
+words gave her food for thought for many months afterwards.
+
+The lion was indeed aroused at last, and whip or goad or wile of no
+avail. There came a time when she no longer knew what he was saying: when
+speech, though eloquent and forceful, seemed a useless medium. Her
+appeals were lost, and she found herself fighting in his arms, when
+suddenly they turned into one of the crowded arteries of Harlem. She made
+a supreme effort of will, and he released her.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, trembling.
+
+But he looked at her, unrepentant, with the light of triumph in his eyes.
+
+"I'll never forgive you!" she exclaimed, breathless.
+
+"I gloried in it," he replied. "I shall remember it as long as I live,
+and I'll do it again."
+
+She did not answer him. She dropped her veil, and for a long space was
+silent while they rapidly threaded the traffic, and at length turned into
+upper Fifth Avenue, skirting the Park. She did not so much as glance at
+him. But he seemed content to watch her veiled profile in the dusk.
+
+Her breath, in the first tumult of her thought, came and went deeply. But
+gradually as the street lights burned brighter and familiar sights began
+to appear, she grew more controlled and became capable of reflection. She
+remembered that there was a train for Quicksands at seven-fifteen, which
+Howard had taken once or twice. But she felt that the interval was too
+short. In that brief period she could not calm herself sufficiently to
+face her guests. Indeed, the notion of appearing alone, or with Brent, at
+that dinner-party, appalled her. And suddenly an idea presented itself.
+
+Brent leaned over, and began to direct the chauffeur to a well-known
+hotel. She interrupted him.
+
+"No," she said, "I'd rather go to the Holland House."
+
+"Very well," he said amicably, not a little surprised at this
+unlooked-for acquiescence, and then told his man to keep straight on down
+the Avenue.
+
+She began mechanically to rearrange her hat and veil; and after that,
+sitting upright, to watch the cross streets with feverish anticipation,
+her hands in her lap.
+
+"Honora?" he said.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"Raise the veil, just for a moment, and look at me."
+
+She shook her head. But for some reason, best known to herself, she
+smiled a little. Perhaps it was because her indignation, which would have
+frightened many men into repentance, left this one undismayed. At any
+rate, he caught the gleam of the smile through the film of her veil, and
+laughed.
+
+"We'll have a little table in the corner of the room," he declared, "and
+you shall order the dinner. Here we are," he cried to the chauffeur.
+"Pull up to the right."
+
+They alighted, crossed the sidewalk, the doors were flung open to receive
+them, and they entered the hotel.
+
+Through the entrance to the restaurant Honora caught sight of the red
+glow of candles upon the white tables, and heard the hum of voices. In
+the hall, people were talking and laughing in groups, and it came as a
+distinct surprise to her that their arrival seemed to occasion no remark.
+At the moment of getting out of the automobile, her courage had almost
+failed her.
+
+Trixton Brent hailed one of the hotel servants.
+
+"Show Mrs. Spence to the ladies' parlour," said he. And added to Honora,
+"I'll get a table, and have the dinner card brought up in a few moments."
+
+Honora stopped the boy at the elevator door.
+
+"Go to the office," she said, "and find out if Mrs. Joshua Holt is in,
+and the number of her room. And take me to the telephone booths. I'll
+wait there."
+
+She asked the telephone operator to call up Mr. Spence's house at
+Quicksands--and waited.
+
+"I'm sorry, madam," he said, after a little while, which seemed like half
+an hour to Honora, "but they've had a fire in the Kingston exchange, and
+the Quicksands line is out of order."
+
+Honora's heart sank; but the bell-boy had reappeared. Yes, Mrs. Holt was
+in.
+
+"Take me to her room," she said, and followed him into the elevator.
+
+In response to his knock the door was opened by Mrs. Holt herself. She
+wore a dove-coloured gown, and in her hand was a copy of the report of
+the Board of Missions. For a moment she peered at Honora over the glasses
+lightly poised on the uncertain rim of her nose.
+
+"Why--my dear!" she exclaimed, in astonishment. Honora!"
+
+"Oh," cried Honora, "I'm so glad you're here. I was so afraid you'd be
+out."
+
+In the embrace that followed both the glasses and the mission report fell
+to the floor. Honora picked them up.
+
+"Sit down, my dear, and tell me how you happen to be here," said Mrs.
+Holt. "I suppose Howard is downstairs."
+
+"No, he isn't," said Honora, rather breathlessly; "that's the reason I
+came here. That's one reason, I mean. I was coming to see you this
+morning, but I simply didn't have time for a call after I got to town."
+
+Mrs. Holt settled herself in the middle of the sofa, the only piece of
+furniture in the room in harmony with her ample proportions. Her attitude
+and posture were both judicial, and justice itself spoke in her
+delft-blue eyes.
+
+"Tell me all about it," she said, thus revealing her suspicions that
+there was something to tell.
+
+"I was just going to," said Honora, hastily, thinking of Trixton Brent
+waiting in the ladies' parlour. "I took lunch at Delmomico's with Mr.
+Grainger, and Mr. Brent, and Mrs. Kame--"
+
+"Cecil Grainger?" demanded Mrs. Holt.
+
+Honora trembled.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"I knew his father and mother intimately," said Mrs. Holt, unexpectedly.
+"And his wife is a friend of mine. She's one of the most executive women
+we have in the 'Working Girls' Association,' and she read a paper today
+that was masterful. You know her, of course."
+
+"No," said Honora, "I haven't met her yet."
+
+"Then how did you happen to be lunching with her husband?
+
+"I wasn't lunching with him, Mrs. Holt," said Honora; "Mr. Brent was
+giving the lunch."
+
+"Who's Mr. Brent?" demanded Mrs. Holt. "One of those Quicksands people?"
+
+"He's not exactly a Quicksands person. I scarcely know how to describe
+him. He's very rich, and goes abroad a great deal, and plays polo. That's
+the reason he has a little place at Quicksands. He's been awfully kind
+both to Howard and me," she added with inspiration.
+
+"And Mrs. Kame?" said Mrs. Holt.
+
+"She's a widow, and has a place at Banbury.
+
+"I never heard of her," said Mrs. Holt, and Honora thanked her stars.
+
+"And Howard approves of these mixed lunches, my dear? When I was young,
+husbands and wives usually went to parties together."
+
+A panicky thought came to Honora, that Mrs. Holt might suddenly inquire
+as to the whereabouts of Mr. Brent's wife.
+
+"Oh, Howard doesn't mind," she said hastily. "I suppose times have
+changed, Mrs. Holt. And after lunch we all went out in Mr. Brent's
+automobile to the Faunces' in Westchester--"
+
+"The Paul Jones Faunces?" Mrs. Holt interrupted.
+
+"What a nice woman that young Mrs. Faunce is! She was Kitty Esterbrook,
+you know. Both of them very old families."
+
+"It was only," continued Honora, in desperation, "it was only to leave
+Mr. Grainger and Mrs. Kame there to spend the night. They all said we had
+plenty of time to go and get back to Quicksands by six o'clock. But
+coming back the automobile broke down--"
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Holt, "it serves any one right for trusting to
+them. I think they are an invention of the devil."
+
+"And we've only just got back to New York this minute."
+
+"Who?" inquired Mrs. Holt.
+
+"Mr. Brent and I," said Honora, with downcast eyes.
+
+"Good gracious!" exclaimed the elder lady.
+
+"I couldn't think of anything else to do but come straight here to you,"
+said Honora, gazing at her friend. "And oh, I'm so glad to find you.
+There's not another train to Quicksands till after nine."
+
+"You did quite right, my dear, under the circumstances. I don't say you
+haven't been foolish, but it's Howard's fault quite as much as yours. He
+has no business to let you do such things."
+
+"And what makes it worse," said Honora, "is that the wires are down to
+Quicksands, and I can't telephone Howard, and we have people to dinner,
+and they don't know I went to Westchester, and there's no use
+telegraphing: it wouldn't be delivered till midnight or morning."
+
+"There, there, my dear, don't worry. I know how anxious you feel on your
+husband's account--"
+
+"Oh--Mrs. Holt, I was going to ask you a great, great favour. Wouldn't
+you go down to Quicksands with me and spend the night--and pay us a
+little visit? You know we would so love to have you!"
+
+"Of course I'll go down with you, my dear," said Mrs. Holt. "I'm
+surprised that you should think for an instant that I wouldn't. It's my
+obvious duty. Martha!" she called, "Martha!"
+
+The door of the bedroom opened, and Mrs. Holt's elderly maid appeared.
+The same maid, by the way, who had closed the shutters that memorable
+stormy night at Silverdale. She had, it seemed, a trick of appearing at
+crises.
+
+"Martha, telephone to Mrs. Edgerly--you know her number-and say that I am
+very sorry, but an unexpected duty calls me out of town to-night, and ask
+her to communicate with the Reverend Mr. Field. As for staying with you,
+Honora," she continued, "I have to be back at Silverdale to-morrow night.
+Perhaps you and Howard will come back with me. My frank opinion is, that
+a rest from the gayety of Quicksands will do you good."
+
+"I will come, with pleasure," said Honora. "But as for Howard--I'm afraid
+he's too busy."
+
+"And how about dinner?" asked Mrs. Holt.
+
+"I forgot to say," said Honora, that Mr. Brent's downstairs. He brought
+me here, of course. Have you any objection to his dining with us?"
+
+"No," answered Mrs. Holt, "I think I should like to see him."
+
+After Mrs. Holt had given instructions to her maid to pack, and Honora
+had brushed some of the dust of the roads from her costume, they
+descended to the ladies' parlour. At the far end of it a waiter holding a
+card was standing respectfully, and Trixton Brent was pacing up and down
+between the windows. When he caught sight of them he stopped in his
+tracks, and stared, and stood as if rooted to the carpet. Honora came
+forward.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Brent!" she cried, "my old friend, Mrs. Holt, is here, and she's
+going to take dinner with us and come down to Quicksands for the night.
+May I introduce Mr. Brent."
+
+"Wasn't it fortunate, Mr. Brent, that Mrs. Spence happened to find me?"
+said Mrs. Holt, as she took his hand. "I know it is a relief to you."
+
+It was not often, indeed, that Trixton Brent was taken off his guard; but
+some allowance must be made for him, since he was facing a situation
+unparalleled in his previous experience. Virtue had not often been so
+triumphant, and never so dramatic as to produce at the critical instant
+so emblematic a defender as this matronly lady in dove colour. For a
+moment, he stared at her, speechless, and then he gathered himself
+together.
+
+"A relief?" he asked.
+
+"It would seem so to me," said Mrs. Holt. "Not that I do not think you
+are perfectly capable of taking care of her, as an intimate friend of her
+husband. I was merely thinking of the proprieties. And as I am a guest in
+this hotel, I expect you both to do me the honour to dine with me before
+we start for Quicksands."
+
+After all, Trixton Brent had a sense of humour, although it must not be
+expected that he should grasp at once all the elements of a joke on
+himself so colossal.
+
+"I, for one," he said, with a slight bow which gave to his words a touch
+somewhat elaborate, "will be delighted." And he shot at Honora a glance
+compounded of many feelings, which she returned smilingly.
+
+"Is that the waiter?" asked Mrs. Holt.
+
+"That is a waiter," said Trixton Brent, glancing at the motionless
+figure. "Shall I call him?"
+
+"If you please," said Mrs. Holt. "Honora, you must tell me what you
+like."
+
+"Anything, Mrs. Holt," said Honora.
+
+"If we are to leave a little after nine," said that lady, balancing her
+glasses on her nose and glancing at the card, "we have not, I'm afraid,
+time for many courses."
+
+The head waiter greeted them at the door of the dining-room. He, too, was
+a man of wisdom and experience. He knew Mrs. Holt, and he knew Trixton
+Brent. If gravity had not been a life-long habit with him, one might have
+suspected him of a desire to laugh. As it was, he seemed palpably
+embarrassed,--for Mr. Brent had evidently been conversing with him.
+
+"Two, sir?" he asked.
+
+"Three," said Mrs. Holt, with dignity.
+
+The head waiter planted them conspicuously in the centre of the room; one
+of the strangest parties, from the point of view of a connoisseur of New
+York, that ever sat down together. Mrs. Holt with her curls, and her
+glasses laid flat on the bosom of her dove-coloured dress; Honora in a
+costume dedicated to the very latest of the sports, and Trixton Brent in
+English tweeds. The dining-room was full. But here and there amongst the
+diners, Honora observed, were elderly people who smiled discreetly as
+they glanced in their direction--friends, perhaps, of Mrs. Holt. And
+suddenly, in one corner, she perceived a table of six where the mirth was
+less restrained.
+
+Fortunately for Mr. Brent, he had had a cocktail, or perhaps two, in
+Honora's absence. Sufficient time had elapsed since their administration
+for their proper soothing and exhilarating effects. At the sound of the
+laughter in the corner he turned his head, a signal for renewed merriment
+from that quarter. Whereupon he turned back again and faced his hostess
+once more with a heroism that compelled Honora's admiration. As a
+sportsman, he had no intention of shirking the bitterness of defeat.
+
+"Mrs. Grainger and Mrs. Shorter," he remarked, "appear to be enjoying
+themselves."
+
+Honora felt her face grow hot as the merriment at the corner table rose
+to a height it had not heretofore attained. And she did not dare to look
+again.
+
+Mrs. Holt was blissfully oblivious to her surroundings. She was, as
+usual, extremely composed, and improved the interval, while drinking her
+soup, with a more or less undisguised observation of Mr. Brent; evidently
+regarding him somewhat in the manner that a suspicious householder would
+look upon a strange gentleman whom he accidentally found in his front
+hall. Explanations were necessary. That Mr. Brent's appearance, on the
+whole, was in his favour did not serve to mitigate her suspicions.
+Good-looking men were apt to be unscrupulous.
+
+"Are you interested in working girls, Mr. Brent?" she inquired presently.
+
+Honora, in spite of her discomfort, had an insane desire to giggle. She
+did not dare to raise her eyes.
+
+"I can't say that I've had much experience with them, Mrs. Holt," he
+replied, with a gravity little short of sublime.
+
+"Naturally you wouldn't have had," said Mrs. Holt. "What I meant was, are
+you interested in the problems they have to face?"
+
+"Extremely," said he, so unexpectedly that Honora choked. "I can't say
+that I've given as many hours as I should have liked to a study of the
+subject, but I don't know of any class that has a harder time. As a rule,
+they're underpaid and overworked, and when night comes they are either
+tired to death or bored to death, and the good-looking ones are subject
+to temptations which some of them find impossible to resist, in a natural
+desire for some excitement to vary the routine of their lives."
+
+"It seems to me," said Mrs. Holt, "that you are fairly conversant with
+the subject. I don't think I ever heard the problem stated so succinctly
+and so well. Perhaps," she added, "it might interest you to attend one of
+our meetings next month. Indeed, you might be willing to say a few
+words."
+
+"I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, Mrs. Holt. I'm a rather busy man,
+and nothing of a public speaker, and it is rarely I get off in the
+daytime."
+
+"How about automobiling?" asked Mrs. Holt, with a smile.
+
+"Well," said Trixton Brent, laughing in spite of himself, "I like the
+working girls, I have to have a little excitement occasionally. And I
+find it easier to get off in the summer than in the winter."
+
+"Men cover a multitude of sins under the plea of business," said Mrs.
+Holt, shaking her head. I can't say I think much of your method of
+distraction. Why any one desires to get into an automobile, I don't see."
+
+"Have you ever been in one?" he asked. "Mine is here, and I was about to
+invite you to go down to the ferry in it. I'll promise to go slow."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Holt, "I don't object to going that distance, if you
+keep your promise. I'll admit that I've always had a curiosity."
+
+"And in return," said Brent, gallantly, "allow me to send you a cheque
+for your working girls."
+
+"You're very good," said Mrs. Holt.
+
+"Oh," he protested, I'm not in the habit of giving much to charities, I'm
+sorry to say. I'd like to know how it feels."
+
+"Then I hope the sensation will induce you to try it again," said Mrs.
+Holt.
+
+"Nobody, Mrs. Holt," cried Honora, "could be kinder to his friends than
+Mr. Brent!"
+
+"We were speaking of disinterested kindness, my dear," was Mrs. Holt's
+reply.
+
+"You're quite right, Mrs. Holt," said Trixton Brent, beginning, as the
+dinner progressed, to take in the lady opposite a delight that surprised
+him. "I'm willing to confess that I've led an extremely selfish
+existence."
+
+"The confession isn't necessary," she replied. "It's written all over
+you. You're the type of successful man who gets what he wants. I don't
+mean to say that you are incapable of kindly instincts." And her eye
+twinkled a little.
+
+"I'm very grateful for that concession, at any rate," he declared.
+
+"There might be some hope for you if you fell into the hands of a good
+woman," said Mrs. Holt. "I take it you are a bachelor. Mark my words, the
+longer you remain one, the more steeped in selfishness you are likely to
+become in this modern and complex and sense-satisfying life which so many
+people lead."
+
+Honora trembled for what he might say to this, remembering his bitter
+references of that afternoon to his own matrimonial experience. Visions
+of a scene arose before her in the event that Mrs. Holt should discover
+his status. But evidently Trixton Brent had no intention of discussing
+his marriage.
+
+"Judging by some of my married friends and acquaintances," he said, "I
+have no desire to try matrimony as a remedy for unselfishness."
+
+"Then," replied Mrs. Holt, "all I can say is, I should make new friends
+amongst another kind of people, if I were you. You are quite right, and
+if I were seeking examples of happy marriages, I should not begin my
+search among the so-called fashionable set of the present day. They are
+so supremely selfish that if the least difference in taste develops, or
+if another man or woman chances along whom they momentarily fancy more
+than their own husbands or wives, they get a divorce. Their idea of
+marriage is not a mutual sacrifice which brings happiness through trials
+borne together and through the making of character. No, they have a
+notion that man and wife may continue to lead their individual lives.
+That isn't marriage. I've lived with Joshua Holt thirty-five years last
+April, and I haven't pleased myself in all that time."
+
+"All men," said Trixton Brent, "are not so fortunate as Mr. Holt."
+
+Honora began to have the sensations of a witness to a debate between
+Mephistopheles and the powers of heaven. Her head swam. But Mrs. Holt,
+who had unlooked-for flashes of humour, laughed, and shook her curls at
+Brent.
+
+"I should like to lecture you some time," she said; "I think it would do
+you good."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'm beyond redemption. Don't you think so, Honora?" he asked, with an
+unexpected return of his audacity.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm not worthy to judge you," she replied, and coloured.
+
+"Stuff and nonsense," said Mrs. Holt; "women are superior to men, and
+it's our duty to keep them in order. And if we're really going to risk
+our lives in your automobile, Mr. Brent, you'd better make sure it's
+there," she added, glancing at her watch.
+
+Having dined together in an apparent and inexplicable amity, their exit
+was of even more interest to the table in the corner than their entrance
+had been. Mrs. Holt's elderly maid was waiting in the hall, Mrs. Holt's
+little trunk was strapped on the rear of the car; and the lady herself,
+with something of the feelings of a missionary embarking for the wilds of
+Africa, was assisted up the little step and through the narrow entrance
+of the tonneau by the combined efforts of Honora and Brent. An expression
+of resolution, emblematic of a determination to die, if necessary, in the
+performance of duty, was on her face as the machinery started; and her
+breath was not quite normal when, in an incredibly brief period, they
+descended at the ferry.
+
+The journey to Quicksands was accomplished in a good fellowship which
+Honora, an hour before, would not have dreamed of. Even Mrs. Holt was not
+wholly proof against the charms of Trixton Brent when he chose to exert
+himself; and for some reason he did so choose. As they stood in the
+starlight on the platform of the deserted little station while he went
+across to Whelen's livery stable to get a carriage, Mrs. Holt remarked to
+Honora:
+
+"Mr. Brent is a fascinating man, my dear."
+
+"I am so glad that you appreciate him," exclaimed Honora.
+
+"And a most dangerous one," continued Mrs. Holt. "He has probably, in his
+day, disturbed the peace of mind of a great many young women. Not that I
+haven't the highest confidence in you, Honora, but honesty forces me to
+confess that you are young and pleasure-loving, and a little heedless.
+And the atmosphere in which you live is not likely to correct those
+tendencies. If you will take my advice, you will not see too much of Mr.
+Trixton Brent when your husband is not present."
+
+Indeed, as to the probable effect of this incident on the relations
+between Mr. Brent and herself Honora was wholly in the dark. Although,
+from her point of view, what she had done had been amply justified by the
+plea of self-defence, it could not be expected that he would accept it in
+the same spirit. The apparent pleasure he had taken in the present
+situation, once his amazement had been overcome, profoundly puzzled her.
+
+He returned in a few minutes with the carriage and driver, and they
+started off. Brent sat in front, and Honora explained to Mrs. Holt the
+appearance of the various places by daylight, and the names of their
+owners. The elderly lady looked with considerable interest at the blazing
+lights of the Club, with the same sensations she would no doubt have had
+if she had been suddenly set down within the Moulin Rouge. Shortly
+afterwards they turned in at the gate of "The Brackens." The light
+streamed across the porch and driveway, and the sound of music floated
+out of the open windows. Within, the figure of Mrs. Barclay could be
+seen; she was singing vaudeville songs at the piano. Mrs. Holt's lips
+were tightly shut as she descended and made her way up the steps.
+
+"I hope you'll come in,", said Honora to Trixton Brent, in a low voice.
+
+"Come in!" he replied, "I wouldn't miss it for ten thousand dollars."
+
+Mrs. Holt was the first of the three to appear at the door of the
+drawing-room, and Mrs. Barclay caught sight of her, and stopped in the
+middle of a bar, with her mouth open. Some of the guests had left. A
+table in the corner, where Lula Chandos had insisted on playing bridge,
+was covered with scattered cards and some bills, a decanter of whiskey,
+two soda bottles, and two glasses. The blue curling smoke from Mrs.
+Chandos' cigarette mingled with the haze that hung between the ceiling
+and the floor, and that lady was in the act of saying cheerfully to
+Howard, who sat opposite,--"Trixy's run off with her."
+
+Suddenly the chill of silence pervaded the room. Lula Chandos, whose back
+was turned to the door, looked from Mrs. Barclay to Howard, who, with the
+other men had risen to his feet.
+
+"What's the matter?" she said in a frightened tone. And, following the
+eyes of the others, turned her head slowly towards the doorway.
+
+Mrs. Holt, who filled it, had been literally incapable of speech. Close
+behind her stood Honora and Trixton whose face was inscrutable.
+
+"Howard," said Honora, summoning all the courage that remained in her,
+"here's Mrs. Holt. We dined with her, and she was good enough to come
+down for the night. I'm so sorry not to have been here," she added to her
+guests, "but we went to Westchester with Mrs. Kame and Mr. Grainger, and
+the automobile broke down on the way back."
+
+Mrs. Holt made no attempt to enter, but stared fixedly at the cigarette
+that Mrs. Chandos still held in her trembling fingers. Howard crossed the
+room in the midst of an intense silence.
+
+"Glad to see you, Mrs. Holt," he said. "Er--won't you come in and--and
+sit down?"
+
+"Thank you, Howard" she replied, "I do not wish to interrupt your party.
+It is my usual hour for retiring.
+
+"And I think, my dear," she added, turning to Honora, "that I'll ask you
+to excuse me, and show me to my room."
+
+"Certainly, Mrs. Holt," said Honora, breathlessly.
+
+"Howard, ring the bell."
+
+She led the way up the stairs to the guest-chamber with the rose paper
+and the little balcony. As she closed the door gusts of laughter reached
+them from the floor below, and she could plainly distinguish the voices
+of May Barclay and Trixton Brent.
+
+"I hope you'll be comfortable, Mrs. Holt," she said. "Your maid will be
+in the little room across the hall and I believe you like breakfast at
+eight."
+
+"You mustn't let me keep you from your guests, Honora."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she said, on the verge of tears, "I don't want to go to
+them. Really, I don't."
+
+"It must be confessed," said Mrs. Holt, opening her handbag and taking
+out the copy of the mission report, which had been carefully folded,
+"that they seem to be able to get along very well without you. I suppose
+I am too old to understand this modern way of living. How well I remember
+one night--it was in 1886--I missed the train to Silverdale, and my
+telegram miscarried. Poor Mr. Holt was nearly out of his head."
+
+She fumbled for her glasses and dropped them. Honora picked them up, and
+it was then she perceived that the tears were raining down the good
+lady's cheeks. At the same moment they sprang into Honora's eyes, and
+blinded her. Mrs. Holt looked at her long and earnestly.
+
+"Go down, my dear," she said gently, "you must not neglect your friends.
+They will wonder where you are. And at what time do you breakfast?"
+
+"At--at any time you like."
+
+"I shall be down at eight," said Mrs. Holt, and she kissed her.
+
+Honora, closing the door, stood motionless in the hall, and presently the
+footsteps and the laughter and the sound of carriage wheels on the gravel
+died away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CONTAINING SOME REVELATIONS
+
+Honora, as she descended, caught a glimpse of the parlour maid picking up
+the scattered cards on the drawing-room floor. There were voices on the
+porch, where Howard was saying good-by to Mrs. Chandos and Trixton Brent.
+She joined them.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" cried Mrs. Chandos, interrupting Honora's apologies, "I'm
+sure I shan't sleep a wink--she gave me such a fright. You might have
+sent Trixy ahead to prepare us. When I first caught sight of her, I
+thought it was my own dear mother who had come all the way from
+Cleveland, and the cigarette burned my fingers. But I must say I think it
+was awfully clever of you to get hold of her and save Trixy's reputation.
+Good night, dear."
+
+And she got into her carriage.
+
+"Give my love to Mrs. Holt," said Brent, as he took Honora's hand, "and
+tell her I feel hurt that she neglected to say good night to me. I
+thought I had made an impression. Tell her I'll send her a cheque for her
+rescue work. She inspires me with confidence."
+
+Howard laughed.
+
+"I'll see you to-morrow, Brent," he called out as they drove away. Though
+always assertive, it seemed to Honora that her husband had an increased
+air of importance as he turned to her now with his hands in his pockets.
+He looked at her for a moment, and laughed again. He, too, had apparently
+seen the incident only in a humorous light. "Well, Honora," he remarked,
+"you have a sort of a P. T. Barnum way of doing things once in a
+while--haven't you? Is the old lady really tucked away for the night, or
+is she coming down to read us a sermon? And how the deuce did you happen
+to pick her up?"
+
+She had come downstairs with confession on her lips, and in the agitation
+of her mind had scarcely heeded Brent's words or Mrs. Chandos'. She had
+come down prepared for any attitude but the one in which she found him;
+for anger, reproaches, arraignments. Nay, she was surprised to find now
+that she had actually hoped for these. She deserved to be scolded: it was
+her right. If he had been all of a man, he would have called her to
+account. There must be--there was something lacking in his character. And
+it came to her suddenly, with all the shock of a great contrast, with
+what different eyes she had looked upon him five years before at
+Silverdale.
+
+He went into the house and started to enter the drawing-room, still in
+disorder and reeking with smoke.
+
+"No, not in there!" she cried sharply.
+
+He turned to her puzzled. Her breath was coming and going quickly. She
+crossed the hall and turned on the light in the little parlour there, and
+he followed her.
+
+"Don't you feel well?" he asked.
+
+"Howard," she said, "weren't you worried?"
+
+"Worried? No, why should I have been? Lula Chandos and May Barclay had
+seen you in the automobile in town, and I knew you were high and dry
+somewhere."
+
+"High and dry," she repeated. What?"
+
+"Nothing. They said I had run off with Mr. Brent, didn't they?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Yes, there was some joking to that effect."
+
+"You didn't take it seriously?
+
+"No--why should I?"
+
+She was appalled by his lack of knowledge of her. All these years she had
+lived with him, and he had not grasped even the elements of her nature.
+And this was marriage! Trixton Brent--short as their acquaintance had
+been--had some conception of her character and possibilities her husband
+none. Where was she to begin? How was she to tell him the episode in the
+automobile in order that he might perceive something of its sinister
+significance?
+
+Where was she to go to be saved from herself, if not to him?
+
+"I might have run away with him, if I had loved him," she said after a
+pause. "Would you have cared?"
+
+"You bet your life," said Howard, and put his arm around her.
+
+She looked up into his face. So intent had she been on what she had meant
+to tell him that she did not until now perceive he was preoccupied, and
+only half listening to what she was saying.
+
+"You bet your life," he said, patting her shoulder. "What would I have
+done, all alone, in the new house?"
+
+"In the new house?" she cried. "Oh, Howard--you haven't taken it!"
+
+"I haven't signed the lease," he replied importantly, smiling down at
+her, and thrusting his hands in his pockets.
+
+"I don't want it," said Honora; "I don't want it. I told you that I'd
+decided I didn't want it when we were there. Oh, Howard, why did you take
+it?"
+
+He whistled. He had the maddening air of one who derives amusement from
+the tantrums of a spoiled child.
+
+"Well," he remarked, "women are too many for me. If there's any way of
+pleasing 'em I haven't yet discovered it. The night before last you had
+to have the house. Nothing else would do. It was the greatest find in New
+York. For the first time in months you get up for breakfast--a pretty
+sure sign you hadn't changed your mind. You drag me to see it, and when
+you land me there, because I don't lose my head immediately, you say you
+don't want it. Of course I didn't take you seriously--I thought you'd set
+your heart on it, so I wired an offer to Shorter to-day, and he accepted
+it. And when I hand you this pleasant little surprise, you go right up in
+the air."
+
+He had no air of vexation, however, as he delivered this somewhat
+reproachful harangue in the picturesque language to which he commonly
+resorted. Quite the contrary. He was still smiling, as Santa Claus must
+smile when he knows he has another pack up the chimney.
+
+"Why this sudden change of mind?" he demanded. "It can't be because you
+want to spend the winter in Quicksands."
+
+She was indeed at a loss what to say. She could not bring herself to ask
+him whether he had been influenced by Trixton Brent. If he had, she told
+herself, she did not wish to know. He was her husband, after all, and it
+would be too humiliating. And then he had taken the house.
+
+"Have you hit on a palace you like better?" he inquired, with a clumsy
+attempt at banter. "They tell me the elder Maitlands are going abroad
+--perhaps we could get their house on the Park."
+
+"You said you couldn't afford Mrs. Rindge's house," she answered
+uneasily, "and I--I believed you."
+
+"I couldn't," he said mysteriously, and paused.
+
+It seemed to her, as she recalled the scene afterwards, that in this
+pause he gave the impression of physically swelling. She remembered
+staring at him with wide, frightened eyes and parted lips.
+
+"I couldn't," he repeated, with the same strange emphasis and a palpable
+attempt at complacency. "But--er--circumstances have changed since then."
+
+"What do you mean, Howard?" she whispered.
+
+The corners of his mouth twitched in the attempt to repress a smile.
+
+"I mean," he said, "that the president of a trust company can afford to
+live in a better house than the junior partner of Dallam and Spence."
+
+"The president of a trust company!" Honora scarcely recognized her own
+voice--so distant it sounded. The room rocked, and she clutched the arm
+of a chair and sat down. He came and stood over her.
+
+"I thought that would surprise you some," he said, obviously pleased by
+these symptoms. "The fact is, I hadn't meant to break it to you until
+morning. But I think I'll go in on the seven thirty-five." (He glanced
+significantly up at the ceiling, as though Mrs. Holt had something to do
+with this decision.) "President of the Orange Trust Company at forty
+isn't so bad, eh?"
+
+"The Orange Trust Company? Did you say the Orange Trust Company?"
+
+"Yes." He produced a cigarette. "Old James Wing and Brent practically
+control it. You see, if I do say it myself, I handled some things pretty
+well for Brent this summer, and he's seemed to appreciate it. He and Wing
+were buying in traction stocks out West. But you could have knocked me
+down with a paper-knife when he came to me--"
+
+"When did he come to you?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"Yesterday. We went down town together, you remember, and he asked me to
+step into his office. Well, we talked it over, and I left on the one
+o'clock for Newport to see Mr. Wing. Wonderful old man! I sat up with him
+till midnight--it wasn't any picnic" . . .
+
+More than once during the night Honora awoke with a sense of oppression,
+and each time went painfully through the whole episode from the evening
+--some weeks past when Trixton Brent had first mentioned the subject of
+the trust company, to the occurrence in the automobile and Howard's
+triumphant announcement. She had but a vague notion of how that scene had
+finished; or of how, limply, she had got to bed. Round and round the
+circle she went in each waking period. To have implored him to relinquish
+the place had been waste of breath; and then--her reasons? These were the
+moments when the current was strongest, when she grew incandescent with
+humiliation and pain; when stray phrases in red letters of Brent's were
+illuminated. Merit! He had a contempt for her husband which he had not
+taken the trouble to hide. But not a business contempt. "As good as the
+next man," Brent had said--or words to that effect. "As good as the next
+man!" Then she had tacitly agreed to the bargain, and refused to honour
+the bill! No, she had not, she had not. Before God, she was innocent of
+that! When she reached this point it was always to James Wing that she
+clung--the financier, at least, had been impartial. And it was he who
+saved her.
+
+At length she opened her eyes to discover with bewilderment that the room
+was flooded with light, and then she sprang out of bed and went to the
+open window. To seaward hung an opal mist, struck here and there with
+crimson. She listened; some one was whistling an air she had heard
+before--Mrs. Barclay had been singing it last night! Wheels crunched the
+gravel--Howard was going off. She stood motionless until the horse's
+hoofs rang on the highroad, and then hurried into her dressing-gown and
+slippers and went downstairs to the telephone and called a number.
+
+"Is this Mr. Brent's? Will you say to Mr. Brent that Mrs. Spence would be
+greatly, obliged if he stopped a moment at her house before going to
+town? Thank you."
+
+She returned to her room and dressed with feverish haste, trying to
+gather her wits for an ordeal which she felt it would have killed her to
+delay. At ten minutes to eight she emerged again and glanced anxiously at
+Mrs. Holt's door; and scarcely had she reached the lower hall before he
+drove into the circle. She was struck more forcibly than ever by the
+physical freshness of the man, and he bestowed on her, as he took her
+hand, the peculiar smile she knew so well, that always seemed to have an
+enigma behind it. At sight and touch of him the memory of what she had
+prepared to say vanished.
+
+"Behold me, as ever, your obedient servant," he said, as he followed her
+into the screened-off portion of the porch.
+
+"You must think it strange that I sent for you, I know," she cried, as
+she turned to him. "But I couldn't wait. I--I did not know until last
+night. Howard only told me then. Oh, you didn't do it for me! Please say
+you didn't do it for me!"
+
+"My dear Honora," replied Trixton Brent, gravely, "we wanted your husband
+for his abilities and the valuable services he can render us."
+
+She stood looking into his eyes, striving to penetrate to the soul
+behind, ignorant or heedless that others before her had tried and failed.
+He met her gaze unflinchingly, and smiled.
+
+"I want the truth," she craved.
+
+"I never lie--to a woman," he said.
+
+"My life--my future depends upon it," she went on. "I'd rather scrub
+floors, I'd rather beg--than to have it so. You must believe me!"
+
+"I do believe you," he affirmed. And he said it with a gentleness and a
+sincerity that startled her.
+
+"Thank you," she answered simply. And speech became very difficult.
+"If--if I haven't been quite fair with you--Mr. Brent, I am sorry. I--I
+liked you, and I like you to-day better than ever before. And I can quite
+see now how I must have misled you into thinking--queer things about me.
+I didn't mean to. I have learned a lesson."
+
+She took a deep, involuntary breath. The touch of lightness in his reply
+served to emphasize the hitherto unsuspected fact that sportsmanship in
+Trixton Brent was not merely a code, but assumed something of the
+grandeur of a principle.
+
+"I, too, have learned a lesson," he replied. "I have learned the
+difference between nature and art. I am something of a connoisseur in
+art. I bow to nature, and pay my bets."
+
+"Your bets?" she asked, with a look.
+
+"My renunciations, forfeits, whatever you choose to call them. I have
+been fairly and squarely beaten--but by nature, not by art. That is my
+consolation."
+
+Laughter struck into her eyes like a shaft of sunlight into a well; her
+emotions were no longer to be distinguished. And in that moment she
+wondered what would have happened if she had loved this man, and why she
+had not. And when next he spoke, she started.
+
+"How is my elderly dove-coloured friend this morning?" he asked. "That
+dinner with her was one of the great events of my life. I didn't suppose
+such people existed any more."
+
+"Perhaps you'll stay to breakfast with her," suggested Honora, smiling.
+"I know she'd like to see you again."
+
+"No, thanks," he said, taking her hand, "I'm on my way to the train--I'd
+quite forgotten it. Au revoir!" He reached the end of the porch, turned,
+and called back, "As a 'dea ex machina', she has never been equalled."
+
+Honora stood for a while looking after him, until she heard a footstep
+behind her,--Mrs. Holt's.
+
+"Who was that, my dear?" she asked, "Howard?"
+
+"Howard has gone, Mrs. Holt," Honora replied, rousing herself. "I must
+make his apologies. It was Mr. Brent."
+
+"Mr. Brent!" the good lady repeated, with a slight upward lift of the
+faint eyebrows. "Does he often call this early?"
+
+Honora coloured a little, and laughed.
+
+"I asked him to breakfast with you, but he had to catch a train. He
+--wished to be remembered. He took such a fancy to you."
+
+"I am afraid," said Mrs. Holt, "that his fancy is a thing to be avoided.
+Are you coming to Silverdale with me, Honora?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Holt," she replied, slipping her arm through that of her
+friend, "for as long as you will let me stay."
+
+And she left a note for Howard to that effect.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 4, by Winston Churchill
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Ebook A Modern Chronicle, v4, by Winston Churchill
+WC#40 in our series by Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston)
+
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
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+Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 4.
+
+Author: Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston Churchill)
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5377]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 28, 2002]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN CHRONICLE, V4, BY CHURCHILL ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+A MODERN CHRONICLE
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+Volume 4.
+
+VII.      OF CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS
+VIII.     OF MENTAL PROCESSES-FEMININE AND INSOLUBLE
+IX.       INTRODUCING A REVOLUTIONIZING VEHICLE
+X.        ON THE ART OF LION TAMING
+XI.       CONTAINING SOME REVELATIONS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+OF CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS
+
+In the religious cult of Gad and Meni, practised with such enthusiasm at
+Quicksands, the Saints' days were polo days, and the chief of all
+festivals the occasion of the match with the Banbury Hunt Club--
+Quicksands's greatest rival.  Rival for more reasons than one, reasons
+too delicate to tell.  Long, long ago there appeared in Punch a cartoon
+of Lord Beaconsfield executing that most difficult of performances, an
+egg dance.  We shall be fortunate indeed if we get to the end of this
+chapter without breaking an egg!
+
+Our pen fails us in a description of that festival of festivals, the
+Banbury one, which took place early in September.  We should have to go
+back to Babylon and the days of King Nebuchadnezzar.  (Who turns out to
+have been only a regent, by the way, and his name is now said to be
+spelled rezzar).  How give an idea of the libations poured out to Gad and
+the shekels laid aside for Meni in the Quicksands Temple?
+
+Honora privately thought that building ugly, and it reminded her of a
+collection of huge yellow fungi sprawling over the ground.  A few of the
+inevitable tortured cedars were around it.  Between two of the larger
+buildings was wedged a room dedicated to the worship of Bacchus, to-day
+like a narrow river-gorge at flood time jammed with tree-trunks--some of
+them, let us say, water-logged--and all grinding together with an
+intolerable noise like a battle.  If you happened to be passing the
+windows, certain more or less intelligible sounds might separate
+themselves from the bedlam.
+
+"Four to five on Quicksands!"
+
+"That stock isn't worth a d--n!"
+
+"She's gone to South Dakota."
+
+Honora, however, is an heretic, as we know.  Without going definitely
+into her reasons, these festivals had gradually become distasteful to
+her.  Perhaps it would be fairer to look at them through the eyes of Lily
+Dallam, who was in her element on such days, and regarded them as the
+most innocent and enjoyable of occasions, and perhaps they were.
+
+The view from the veranda, at least, appealed to our heroine's artistic
+sense.  The marshes in the middle distance, the shimmering sea beyond,
+and the polo field laid down like a vast green carpet in the foreground;
+while the players, in white breeches and bright shirts, on the agile
+little horses that darted hither and thither across the turf lent an
+added touch of colour and movement to the scene.  Amongst them, Trixton
+Brent most frequently caught the eye and held it.  Once Honora perceived
+him flying the length of the field, madly pursued, his mallet poised
+lightly, his shirt bulging in the wind, his close-cropped head bereft of
+a cap, regardless of the havoc and confusion behind him.  He played,
+indeed, with the cocksureness and individuality one might have expected;
+and Honora, forgetting at moments the disturbing elements by which she
+was surrounded, followed him with fascination.  Occasionally his name
+rippled from one end of the crowded veranda to the other, and she
+experienced a curious and uncomfortable sensation when she heard it in
+the mouths of these strangers.
+
+From time to time she found herself watching them furtively, comparing
+them unconsciously with her Quicksands friends.  Some of them she had
+remarked before, at contests of a minor importance, and they seemed to
+her to possess a certain distinction that was indefinable.  They had come
+to-day from many mysterious (and therefore delightful) places which
+Honora knew only by name, and some had driven the twenty-five odd miles
+from the bunting community of Banbury in coaches and even those new and
+marvellous importations--French automobiles.  When the game had ended,
+and Lily Dallam was cajoling the club steward to set her tea-table at
+once, a group of these visitors halted on the lawn, talking and laughing
+gayly.  Two of the younger men Honora recognized with a start, but for a
+moment she could not place them--until suddenly she remembered that she
+had seen them on her wedding trip at Hot Springs.  The one who lisped was
+Mr. Cuthbert, familiarly known as "Toots": the other, taller and slimmer
+and paler, was Jimmy Wing.  A third, the regularity of whose features
+made one wonder at the perfection which nature could attain when she
+chose, who had a certain Gallic appearance (and who, if the truth be
+told, might have reminded an impartial eye of a slightly animated wax
+clothing model), turned, stared, hesitated, and bowed to Lily Dallam.
+
+"That's Reggie Farwel, who did my house in town," she whispered to
+Honora.  "He's never been near me since it was finished.  He's utterly
+ruined."
+
+Honora was silent.  She tried not to look at the group, in which there
+were two women of very attractive appearance, and another man.
+
+"Those people are so superior," Mrs. Dallam continued.
+
+"I'm not surprised at Elsie Shorter.  Ever since she married Jerry she's
+stuck to the Graingers closer than a sister.  That's Cecil Grainger, my
+dear, the man who looks as though be were going to fall asleep any
+moment.  But to think of Abby Kame acting that way!  Isn't it ridiculous,
+Clara?"  she cried, appealing to Mrs. Trowbridge.  "They say that Cecil
+Grainger never leaves her side.  I knew her when she first married John
+Kame, the dearest, simplest man that ever was.  He was twenty years older
+than Abby, and made his money in leather.  She took the first steamer
+after his funeral and an apartment in a Roman palace for the winter.  As
+soon as she decently could she made for England.  The English will put up
+with anybody who has a few million dollars, and I don't deny that Abby's
+good-looking, and clever in her way.  But it's absurd for her to come
+over here and act as though we didn't exist.  She needn't be afraid that
+I'll speak to her.  They say she became intimate with Bessie Grainger
+through charities.  One of your friend Mrs. Holt's charities, by the
+way, Honora.  Where are you going?"
+
+For Honora had risen.
+
+"I think I'll go home, Lily," she said; "I'm rather tired."
+
+"Home!" exclaimed Mrs. Dallam.  "What can you be thinking of, my dear?
+Nobody ever goes home after the Banbury match.  The fun has just begun,
+and we're all to stay here for dinner and dance afterwards.  And Trixy
+Brent promised me faithfully he'd' come here for tea, as soon as he
+dressed."
+
+"I really can't stay, Lily.  I--I don't feel up to it," said Honora,
+desperately.
+
+"And you can't know how I counted on you!  You look perfectly fresh, my
+dear."
+
+Honora felt an overwhelming desire to hide herself, to be alone.  In
+spite of the cries of protest that followed her and drew--she thought--an
+unnecessary and disagreeable attention to her departure, she threaded her
+way among groups of people who stared after her.  Her colour was high,
+her heart beating painfully; a vague sense of rebellion and shame within
+her for which she did not try to account.  Rather than run the gantlet of
+the crowded veranda she stepped out on the lawn, and there encountered
+Trixton Brent.  He had, in an incredibly brief time, changed from his
+polo clothes to flannels and a straw hat.  He looked at her and whistled,
+and barred her passage.
+
+"Hello!" he cried.  "Hoity-toity!  Where are we going in such a hurry?"
+
+"Home," answered Honora, a little breathlessly, and added for his
+deception, "the game's over, isn't it?  I'm glad you won."
+
+Mr. Brent, however, continued to gaze at her penetratingly, and she
+avoided his eyes.
+
+"But why are you rushing off like a flushed partridge?--no reference to
+your complexion.  Has there been a row?"
+
+"Oh, no--I was just--tired.  Please let me go."
+
+"Being your good angel--or physician, as you choose--I have a
+prescription for that kind of weariness," he said smilingly.
+"I--anticipated such an attack.  That's why I got into my clothes in such
+record time."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," faltered Honora.  "You are always imagining
+all sorts of things about me that aren't true."
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Brent, "I have promised faithfully to do a
+favor for certain friends of mine who have been clamouring to be
+presented to you."
+
+"I can't--to-day--Mr. Brent," she cried.  "I really don't feel like-
+meeting people.  I told Lily Dallam I was going home."
+
+The group, however, which had been the object of that lady's remarks was
+already moving towards them--with the exception of Mrs. Shorter and Mr.
+Farwell, who had left it.  They greeted Mr. Brent with great cordiality.
+
+"Mrs. Kame," he said, "let me introduce Mrs. Spence.  And Mrs. Spence,
+Mr. Grainger, Mr. Wing, and Mr. Cuthbert.  Mrs. Spence was just going
+home."
+
+"Home!" echoed Mrs. Kame, "I thought Quicksands people never went home
+after a victory."
+
+"I've scarcely been here long enough," replied Honora, "to have acquired
+all of the Quicksands habits."
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Kame, and looked at Honora again.  "Wasn't that Mrs.
+Dallam you were with?  I used to know her, years ago, but she doesn't
+speak to me any more."
+
+"Perhaps she thinks you've forgotten her," said Honora.
+
+"It would be impossible to forget Mrs. Dallam," declared Mrs. Kame.
+
+"So I should have thought," said Honora.
+
+Trixton Brent laughed, and Mrs. Kame, too, after a moment's hesitation.
+She laid her hand familiarly on Mr. Brent's arm.
+
+"I haven't seen yon all summer, Trixy," she said.  "I hear you've been
+here at Quicksands, stewing in that little packing-case of yours.  Aren't
+you coming into our steeplechase at Banbury.
+
+"I believe you went to school with my sister," said young Mr. Wing.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Honora, somewhat surprised.  "I caught a glimpse of
+her once, in New York.  I hope you will remember me to her."
+
+"And I've seen you before," proclaimed Mr. Cuthbert, "but I can't for the
+life of me think where."
+
+Honora did not enlighten him.
+
+"I shan't forget, at any rate, Mrs. Spence," said Cecil Grainger, who had
+not taken his eyes from her, except to blink.
+
+Mrs. Kame saved her the embarrassment of replying.
+
+"Can't we go somewhere and play bridge," Trixy demanded.
+
+I'd be delighted to offer you the hospitality of my packing-case, as you
+call it," said Brent, "but the diningroom ceiling fell down Wednesday,
+and I'm having the others bolstered up as a mere matter of precaution."
+
+"I suppose we couldn't get a fourth, anyway.  Neither Jimmy nor Toots
+plays.  It's so stupid of them not to learn."
+
+"Mrs. Spence might, help us out," suggested Brent.
+
+"Do you play?"  exclaimed Mrs. Kame, in a voice of mixed incredulity and
+hope.
+
+"Play!" cried Mr. Brent, "she can teach Jerry Shorter or the Duchess of
+Taunton."
+
+"The Duchess cheats," announced Cecil Grainger.  "I caught her at it at
+Cannes--"
+
+"Indeed, I don't play very well," Honora interrupted him, "and besides--"
+
+"Suppose we go over to Mrs. Spence's house," Trixton Brent suggested.
+"I'm sure she'd like to have us wouldn't you, Mrs. Spence?"
+
+"What a brilliant idea, Trixy!" exclaimed Mrs. Kame.
+
+"I should be delighted," said Honora, somewhat weakly.  An impulse made
+her glance toward the veranda, and for a fraction of a second she caught
+the eye of Lily Dallam, who turned again to Mrs. Chandos.
+
+"I say," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I don't play--but I hope I may come along."
+
+"And me too," chimed in Mr. Wing.
+
+Honora, not free from a certain uneasiness of conscience, led the way to
+the Brackens, flanked by Mr. Grainger and Mr. Cuthbert.  Her frame of
+mind was not an ideal one for a hostess; she was put out with Trixton
+Brent, and she could not help wondering whether these people would have
+made themselves so free with another house.  When tea was over, however,
+and the bridge had begun, her spirits rose; or rather, a new and strange
+excitement took possession of her that was not wholly due to the novel
+and revolutionary experience of playing, for money--and winning.  Her
+star being in the ascendant, as we may perceive.  She had drawn Mrs. Kame
+for a partner, and the satisfaction and graciousness of that lady visibly
+grew as the score mounted: even the skill of Trixton Brent could not
+triumph over the hands which the two ladies held.
+
+In the intervals the talk wandered into regions unfamiliar to Honora, and
+she had a sense that her own horizon was being enlarged.  A new vista, at
+least, had been cut: possibilities became probabilities.  Even when Mrs.
+Kame chose to ridicule Quicksands Honora was silent, so keenly did she
+feel the justice of her guest's remarks; and the implication was that
+Honora did not belong there.  When train time arrived and they were about
+to climb into Trixton Brent's omnibus--for which he had obligingly
+telephoned--Mrs. Kame took Honora's band in both her own.  Some good
+thing, after all, could come out of this community--such was the
+triumphant discovery the lady's manner implied.
+
+"My dear, don't you ever come to Banbury?" she asked.  I'd be so glad to
+see you.  I must get Trixy to drive you over some day for lunch.  We've
+had such a good time, and Cecil didn't fall asleep once.  Quite a record.
+You saved our lives, really."
+
+"Are you going to be in town this winter?"  Mr. Grainger inquired.
+
+"I,--I suppose so--replied Honora, for the moment taken aback, although I
+haven't decided just where."
+
+"I shall look forward to seeing you," he said.
+
+This hope was expressed even more fervently by Mr. Cuthbert and Mr. Wing,
+and the whole party waved her a cordial good-by as the carriage turned
+the circle.  Trixton Brent, with his hands in his pockets, stood facing
+her under the electric light on the porch.
+
+"Well?" he said.
+"Well," repeated Honora.
+
+"Nice people," said Mr. Brent,
+
+Honora bridled.
+
+"You invited them here," she said.  "I must say I think it, was rather--
+presumptuous.  And you've got me into no end of trouble with Lily
+Dallam."
+
+He laughed as he held open the screen door for her.
+
+"I wonder whether a good angel was ever so abused," he said.
+
+"A good angel," she repeated, smiling at him in spite of herself.
+
+"Or knight-errant," he continued, "whichever you choose.  You want to get
+out of Quicksands--I'm trying to make it easy for you.  Before you leave
+you have to arrange some place to go.  Before we are off with the old
+we'd better be on with the new."
+
+"Oh, please don't say such things," she cried, "they're so--so sordid."
+She looked searchingly into his face.  "Do I really seem to you like
+that?"
+
+Her lip was quivering, and she was still under the influence of the
+excitement which the visit of these people had brought about.
+
+"No," said Brent--coming very close to her, "no, you don't.  That's the
+extraordinary part of it.  The trouble with you, Honora, is that you want
+something badly very badly--and you haven't yet found out what it is.
+
+"And you won't find out," he added, "until you have tried everything.
+Therefore am I a good Samaritan, or something like it."
+
+She looked at him with startled eyes, breathing deeply.
+
+"I wonder if that is so!" she said, in a low voice.
+
+"Not until you have had and broken every toy in the shop," he declared.
+"Out of the mouths of men of the world occasionally issues wisdom.  I'm
+going to help you get the toys.  Don't you think I'm kind?"
+
+"And isn't this philanthropic mood a little new to you?" she asked.
+
+"I thought I had exhausted all novelties," he answered.  "Perhaps that's
+the reason why I enjoy it."
+
+She turned and walked slowly into the drawing-room, halted, and stood
+staring at the heap of gold and yellow bills that Mr. Grainger had
+deposited in front of the place where she had sat.  Her sensation was
+akin to sickness.  She reached out with a kind of shuddering fascination
+and touched the gold.
+
+"I think," she said, speaking rather to herself than to Brent, "I'll give
+it to charity."
+
+"If it is possible to combine a meritorious act with good policy, I
+should suggest giving it to Mrs. Grainger for the relief of oppressed
+working girls," he said.
+
+Honora started.
+
+"I wonder why Howard doesn't come she exclaimed, looking at the clock.
+
+"Probably because he is holding nothing but full hands and flushes,"
+hazarded Mr. Brent.  "Might I propose myself for dinner?"
+
+"When so many people are clamouring for you?" she asked.
+
+"Even so," he said.
+
+"I think I'll telephone to the Club," said Honora, and left the room.
+
+It was some time before her husband responded to the call; and then he
+explained that if Honora didn't object, he was going to a man's dinner in
+a private room.  The statement was not unusual.
+
+"But, Howard," she said, I--I wanted you particularly to-night."
+
+"I thought you were going to dine with Lily Dallam.  She told me you
+were.  Are you alone?"
+
+"Mr. Brent is here.  He brought over some Banbury people to play bridge.
+They've gone."
+
+"Oh, Brent will amuse you," he replied.  "I didn't know you were going to
+be home, and I've promised these men.  I'll come back early."
+
+She hung up the receiver thoughtfully, paused a moment, and went back to
+the drawing-room.  Brent looked up.
+
+"Well," he said, "was I right?"
+
+"You seem always to be right," Honora, sighed.
+
+After dinner they sat in the screened part of the porch which Mrs. Fern
+had arranged very cleverly as an outside room.  Brent had put a rug over
+Honora's knees, for the ocean breath that stirred the leaves was cold.
+Across the darkness fragments of dance music drifted fitfully from the
+Club, and died away; and at intervals, when the embers of his cigar
+flared up, she caught sight of her companion's face.
+
+She found him difficult to understand.  There are certain rules of thumb
+in every art, no doubt,--even in that most perilous one of lion-taming.
+But here was a baffling, individual lion.  She liked him best, she told
+herself, when he purred platonically, but she could by no means be sure
+that his subjection was complete.  Sometimes he had scratched her in his
+play.  And however natural it is to desire a lion for one's friend, to be
+eaten is both uncomfortable and inglorious.
+
+"That's, a remarkable husband of yours," he said at length.
+
+"I shouldn't have said that you were a particularly good judge of
+husbands," she retorted, after a moment of surprise.
+
+He acknowledged with a laugh the justice of this observation.
+
+"I stand corrected.  He is by no means a remarkable husband.  Permit me
+to say he is a remarkable man."
+
+"What makes you think so?" asked Honora, considerably disturbed.
+
+"Because he induced you to marry him, for one thing," said Brent.
+"Of course he got you before you knew what you were worth, but we must
+give him credit for discovery and foresight."
+
+"Perhaps," Honora could not resist replying, "perhaps he didn't know what
+he was getting."
+
+"That's probably true," Brent assented, "or he'd be sitting here now,
+where I am, instead of playing poker.  Although there is something in
+matrimony that takes the bloom off the peach."
+
+"I think that's a horrid, cynical remark," said Honora.
+
+"Well," he said, "we speak according to our experiences--that is, if
+we're not inclined to be hypocritical.  Most women are."
+
+Honora was silent.  He had thrown away his cigar, and she could no longer
+see his face.  She wondered whither he was leading.
+
+"How would you like to see your husband president of a trust company?" he
+said suddenly.
+
+"Howard--president of a trust company!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?"  he demanded.  And added enigmatically, "Smaller men have
+been."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't joke about Howard," she said.
+
+"How does the idea strike you?" he persisted.  "Ambition satisfied--
+temporarily; Quicksands a mile-stone on a back road; another toy to
+break; husband a big man in the community, so far as the eye can see;
+visiting list on Fifth Avenue, and all that sort of thing."
+
+"I once told you you could be brutal," she said.
+
+"You haven't told me what you thought of the idea."
+
+"I wish you'd be sensible once in a while," she exclaimed.
+
+"Howard Spence, President of the Orange Trust Company!" he recited.
+"I suppose no man is a hero to his wife.  Does it sound so incredible?"
+
+It did.  But Honora did not say so.
+
+"What have I to do with it?"  she asked, in pardonable doubt as to his
+seriousness.
+
+"Everything," answered Brent.  "Women of your type usually have.  They
+make and mar without rhyme or reason--set business by the ears, alter the
+gold reserve, disturb the balance of trade, and nobody ever suspects it.
+Old James Wing and I have got a trust company organized, and the building
+up, and the man Wing wanted for president backed out."
+
+Honora sat up.
+
+"Why--why did he 'back out'?" she demanded.
+
+"He preferred to stay where he was, I suppose," replied Brent, in another
+tone.  "The point is that the place is empty.  I'll give it to YOU."
+
+"To me?"
+
+"Certainly," said Brent, "I don't pretend to care anything about your
+husband.  He'll do as well as the next man.  His duties are pretty well--
+defined."
+
+Again she was silent.  But after a moment dropped back in her chair and
+laughed uneasily.
+
+"You're preposterous," she said; "I can't think why I let you talk to me
+in this way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+OF MENTAL PROCESSES--FEMININE AND INSOLUBLE
+
+Honora may be pardoned for finally ascribing to Mr. Brent's somewhat
+sardonic sense of humour his remarks concerning her husband's elevation
+to a conspicuous position in the world of finance.  Taken in any other
+sense than a joke, they were both insulting and degrading, and made her
+face burn when she thought of them.  After he had gone--or rather after
+she had dismissed him--she took a book upstairs to wait for Howard, but
+she could not read.  At times she wished she had rebuked Trixton Brent
+more forcibly, although he was not an easy person to rebuke; and again
+she reflected that, had she taken the matter too seriously, she would
+have laid herself open to his ridicule.  The lion was often unwittingly
+rough, and perhaps that was part of his fascination.
+
+If Howard had come home before midnight it is possible that she might
+have tried to sound him as to his relations with Trixton Brent.  That
+gentleman, she remembered, had the reputation of being a peculiarly
+hardheaded business man, and it was of course absurd that he should offer
+her husband a position merely to please her.  And her imagination failed
+her when she tried to think of Howard as the president of a trust
+company.  She was unable to picture him in a great executive office:
+
+This tram of thought led her to the unaccustomed task of analyzing his
+character.  For the first time since her marriage comparisons crept into
+her mind, and she awoke to the fact that he was not a masterful man--even
+among men.  For all his self-confidence-self-assurance, perhaps, would be
+the better word--he was in reality a follower, not a leader; a gleaner.
+He did not lack ideas.  She tried to arrest the process in her brain when
+she got as far as asking herself whether it might not be that he lacked
+ideals.  Since in business matters he never had taken her into his
+confidence, and since she would not at any rate have understood such
+things, she had no proof of such a failing.  But one or two vague remarks
+of Trixton Brent's which she recalled, and Howard's own request that she
+should be friendly with Brent, reenforced her instinct on this point.
+
+When she heard her husband's footstep on the porch, she put out her
+light, but still lay thinking in the darkness.  Her revelations had
+arrived at the uncomfortable stage where they began to frighten her,
+and with an effort she forced herself to turn to the other side of the
+account.  The hour was conducive to exaggerations.  Perfection in
+husbands was evidently a state not to be considered by any woman in her
+right senses.  He was more or less amenable, and he was prosperous,
+although definite news of that prosperity never came from him--Quicksands
+always knew of it first.  An instance of this second-hand acquisition of
+knowledge occurred the very next morning, when Lily Dallam, with much
+dignity, walked into Honora's little sitting-room.  There was no apparent
+reason why dignity should not have been becoming to Lily Dallam, for she
+was by no means an unimpressive-looking woman; but the assumption by her
+of that quality always made her a little tragic or (if one chanced to be
+in the humour--Honora was not) a little ridiculous.
+
+"I suppose I have no pride," she said, as she halted within a few feet of
+the doorway.
+
+"Why, Lily!" exclaimed Honora, pushing back the chair from her desk, and
+rising.
+
+But Mrs. Dallam did not move.
+
+"I suppose I have no pride," she repeated in a dead voice, "but I just
+couldn't help coming over and giving you a chance."
+
+"Giving me a chance?" said Honora.
+
+"To explain--after the way you treated me at the polo game.  If I hadn't
+seen it with my own eyes, I shouldn't have believed it.  I don't think I
+should have trusted my own eyes," Mrs. Dallam went so far as to affirm,
+"if Lula Chandos and Clara Trowbridge and others hadn't been there and
+seen it too; I shouldn't have believed it."
+
+Honora was finding penitence a little difficult.  But her heart was kind.
+
+"Do sit down, Lily," she begged.  "If I've offended you in any way, I'm
+exceedingly sorry--I am, really.  You ought to know me well enough to
+understand that I wouldn't do anything to hurt your feelings."
+
+"And when I counted on you so, for my tea and dinner at the club!"
+continued Mrs. Dallam.  "There were other women dying to come.  And you
+said you had a headache, and were tired."
+
+"I was," began Honora, fruitlessly.
+
+"And you were so popular in Quicksands--everybody was crazy about you.
+You were so sweet and so unspoiled.  I might have known that it couldn't
+last.  And now, because Abby Kame and Cecil Grainger and--"
+
+"Lily, please don't say such things!" Honora implored, revolted.
+
+"Of course you won't be satisfied now with anything less than Banbury or
+Newport.  But you can't say I didn't warn you, Honora, that they are a
+horrid, selfish, fast lot," Lily Dallam declared, and brushed her eyes
+with her handkerchief.  "I did love you."
+
+"If you'll only be reasonable a moment, Lily,--" said Honora.
+
+"Reasonable!  I saw you with my own eyes.  Five minutes after you left me
+they all started for your house, and Lula Chandos said it was the
+quickest cure of a headache she had ever seen."
+
+"Lily," Honora began again, with exemplary patience, when people invite
+themselves to one's house, it's a little difficult to refuse them
+hospitality, isn't it?"
+
+"Invite themselves?"
+
+"Yes," replied Honora.  "If I weren't--fond of you, too, I shouldn't make
+this explanation.  I was tired.  I never felt less like entertaining
+strangers.  They wanted to play bridge, there wasn't a quiet spot in the
+Club where they could go.  They knew I was on my way home, and they
+suggested my house.  That is how it happened."
+
+Mrs. Dallam was silent a moment.
+
+"May I have one of Howard's cigarettes?" she asked, and added, after this
+modest wish had been supplied, that's just like them.  They're willing to
+make use of anybody."
+
+"I meant," said Honora, "to have gone to your house this morning and to
+have explained how it happened."
+
+Another brief silence, broken by Lily Dallam.
+
+"Did you notice the skirt of that suit Abby Kame had on?", she asked.
+"I'm sure she paid a fabulous price for it in Paris, and it's exactly
+like one I ordered on Tuesday."
+
+The details of the rest of this conversation may be omitted.  That Honora
+was forgiven, and Mrs. Dallam's spirits restored may be inferred from her
+final remark.
+
+"My dear, what do you think of Sid and Howard making twenty thousand
+dollars apiece in Sassafras Copper?  Isn't it too lovely!  I'm having a
+little architect make me plans for a conservatory.  You know I've always
+been dying for one--I don't see how I've lived all these years without
+it."
+
+Honora, after her friend had gone, sat down in one of the wicker chairs
+on the porch.  She had a very vague idea as to how much twenty thousand
+dollars was, but she reflected that while they had lived in Rivington
+Howard must have made many similar sums, of which she was unaware.
+Gradually she began to realize, however, that her resentment of the lack
+of confidence of her husband was by no means the only cause of the
+feeling that took possession of and overwhelmed her.  Something like it
+she had experienced before: to-day her thoughts seemed to run through her
+in pulsations, like waves of heat, and she wondered that she could have
+controlled herself while listening to Lily Dallam.
+
+Mrs. Dallam's reproaches presented themselves to Honora in new aspects.
+She began to feel now, with an intensity that frightened her, distaste
+and rebellion.  It was intolerable that she should be called to account
+for the people she chose to have in her house, that any sort of pressure
+should be brought to bear on her to confine her friends to Quicksands.
+Treason, heresy, disloyalty to the cult of that community--in reality
+these, and not a breach of engagement, were the things of which she had
+been accused.  She saw now.  She would not be tied to Quicksands--she
+would not, she would not, she would not!  She owed it no allegiance.
+Her very soul rebelled at the thought, and cried out that she was made
+for something better, something higher than the life she had been
+leading.  She would permit no one forcibly to restrict her horizon.
+
+Just where and how this higher and better life was to be found Honora did
+not know; but the belief of her childhood--that it existed somewhere--was
+still intact.  Her powers of analysis, we see, are only just budding,
+and she did not and could not define the ideal existence which she so
+unflaggingly sought.  Of two of its attributes only she was sure--that
+it was to be free from restraint and from odious comparisons.  Honora's
+development, it may be remarked, proceeds by the action of irritants, and
+of late her protest against Quicksands and what it represented had driven
+her to other books besides the treatise on bridge.  The library she had
+collected at Rivington she had brought with her, and was adding to it
+from time to time.  Its volumes are neither sufficiently extensive or
+profound to enumerate.
+
+Those who are more or less skilled in psychology may attempt to establish
+a sequence between the events and reflections just related and the fact
+that, one morning a fortnight later, Honora found herself driving
+northward on Fifth Avenue in a hansom cab.  She was in a pleasurable
+state of adventurous excitement, comparable to that Columbus must have
+felt when the shores of the Old World had disappeared below the horizon.
+During the fortnight we have skipped Honora had been to town several
+times, and had driven and walked through certain streets: inspiration,
+courage, and decision had all arrived at once this morning, when at the
+ferry she had given the cabman this particular address on Fifth Avenue.
+
+The cab, with the jerking and thumping peculiar to hansoms, made a circle
+and drew up at the curb.  But even then a moment of irresolution
+intervened, and she sat staring through the little side window at the
+sign, T. Gerald Shorter, Real Estate, in neat gold letters over the
+basement floor of the building.
+
+"Here y'are, Miss," said the cabman through the hole in the roof.
+
+Honora descended, and was almost at the flight of steps leading down to
+the office door when a familiar figure appeared coming out of it.  It was
+that of Mr. Toots Cuthbert, arrayed in a faultless morning suit, his tie
+delicately suggestive of falling leaves; and there dangled over his arm
+the slenderest of walking sticks.
+
+"Mrs. Spence!" he lisped, with every appearance of joy.
+
+"Mr. Cuthbert!" she cried.
+
+"Going in to see Jerry?" he inquired after he had put on his hat, nodding
+up at the sign.
+
+"I--that is, yes, I had thought of it," she answered.
+
+"Town house?" said Mr. Cuthbert, with a knowing smile.
+
+"I did have an idea of looking at houses," she confessed, somewhat taken
+aback.
+
+"I'm your man," announced Mr. Cuthbert.
+
+"You!" exclaimed Honora, with an air of considering the lilies of the
+field.  But he did not seem to take offence.
+
+"That's my business," he proclaimed,--"when in town.  Jerry gives me a
+commission.  Come in and see him, while I get a list and some keys.  By
+the way, you wouldn't object to telling him you were a friend of mine,
+would you?"
+
+"Not at all," said Honora, laughing.
+
+Mr. Shorter was a jovial gentleman in loose-fitting clothes, and he was
+exceedingly glad to meet Mr. Cuthbert's friend.
+
+"What kind of a house do you want, Mrs. Spence?"  he asked.  "Cuthbert
+tells me this morning that the Whitworth house has come into the market.
+You couldn't have a better location than that, on the Avenue between the
+Cathedral and the Park."
+
+"Oh," said Honora with a gasp, "that's much too expensive, I'm sure.
+And there are only two of us."  She hesitated, a little alarmed at the
+rapidity with which affairs were proceeding, and added: "I ought to tell
+you that I've not really decided to take a house.  I wished to--to see
+what there was to be had, and then I should have to consult my husband."
+
+She gazed very seriously into Mr. Shorter's brown eyes, which became very
+wide and serious, too.  But all the time it seemed to her that other
+parts of him were laughing.
+
+"Husbands," he declared, "are kill-joys.  What have they got to do with
+a house--except to sleep in it?  Now I haven't the pleasure of knowing
+you as well as I hope to one of these days, Mrs. Spence--"
+
+"Oh, I say!" interrupted Mr. Cuthbert.
+
+"But I venture to predict, on a slight acquaintance," continued Mr.
+Shorter, undisturbed, "that you will pick out the house you want, and
+that your husband will move into it."
+
+Honora could not help laughing.  And Mr. Shorter leaned back in his
+revolving chair and laughed, too, in so alarming a manner as to lead her
+to fear he would fall over backwards.  But Mr. Cuthbert, who did not
+appear to perceive the humour in this conversation, extracted some keys
+and several pasteboard slips from a rack in the corner.  Suddenly Mr.
+Shorter jerked himself upright again, and became very solemn.
+
+"Where's my hat?"  he demanded.
+
+"What do you want with your hat?" Mr. Cuthbert inquired.
+
+"Why, I'm going with you, of course," Mr. Shorter replied.  "I've decided
+to take a personal interest in this matter.  You may regard my presence,
+Cuthbert, as justified by an artistic passion for my profession.  I
+should never forgive myself if Mrs. Spence didn't get just the right
+house."
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I'll manage that all right.  I thought you were
+going to see the representative of a syndicate at eleven."
+
+Mr. Shorter, with a sigh, acknowledged this necessity, and escorted
+Honora gallantly through the office and across the sidewalk to the
+waiting hansom.  Cuthbert got in beside her.
+
+"Jerry's a joker," he observed as they drove off, "you mustn't mind him."
+
+"I think he's delightful," said Honora.
+
+"One wouldn't believe that a man of his size and appearance could be so
+fond of women," said Mr. Cuthbert.  "He's the greatest old lady-killer
+that ever breathed.  For two cents he would have come with us this
+morning, and let a five thousand dollar commission go.  Do you know Mrs.
+Shorter?"
+
+"No," replied Honora.  "She looks most attractive.  I caught a glimpse of
+her at the polo that day with you."
+
+"I've been at her house in Newport ever since.  Came down yesterday to
+try to earn some money," he continued, cheerfully making himself
+agreeable.  "Deuced clever woman, much too clever for me and Jerry too.
+Always in a tete-a-tete with an antiquarian or a pathologist, or a
+psychologist, and tells novelists what to put into their next books and
+jurists how to decide cases.  Full of modern and liberal ideas--believes
+in free love and all that sort of thing, and gives Jerry the dickens for
+practising it."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Honora.
+
+Mr. Cuthbert, however, did not appear to realize that he had shocked her.
+
+"By the way," he asked, "have you seen Cecil Grainger since the
+Quicksands game?"
+
+"No," she replied.  "Has Mr. Grainger been at Quicksands since?"
+
+"Nobody knows where he's been," answered Mr. Cuthbert.  "It's a mystery.
+He hasn't been home--at Newport, I mean-for a fortnight.  He's never
+stayed away so long without letting any one know where he is.  Naturally
+they thought he was at Mrs. Kame's in Banbury, but she hasn't laid eyes
+on him.  It's a mystery.  My own theory is that he went to sleep in a
+parlour car and was sent to the yards, and hasn't waked up."
+
+"And isn't Mrs. Grainger worried?" asked Honora.
+
+"Oh, you never can tell anything about her," he said.  "Do you know her?
+She's a sphinx.  All the Pendletons are Stoics.  And besides, she's been
+so busy with this Charities Conference that she hasn't had time to think
+of Cecil.  Who's that?"
+
+"That" was a lady from Rivington, one of Honora's former neighbours, to
+whom she had bowed.  Life, indeed, is full of contrasts.  Mr. Cuthbert,
+too, was continually bowing and waving to acquaintances on the Avenue.
+
+Thus pleasantly conversing, they arrived at the first house on the list,
+and afterwards went through a succession of them.  Once inside, Honora
+would look helplessly about her in the darkness while her escort would
+raise the shades, admitting a gloomy light on bare interiors or shrouded
+furniture.
+
+And the rents: Four, five, six, and seven and eight thousand dollars
+a year.  Pride prevented her from discussing these prices with Mr.
+Cuthbert; and in truth, when lunch time came, she had seen nothing
+which realized her somewhat vague but persistent ideals.
+
+"I'm so much obliged to you," she said, "and I hope you'll forgive me for
+wasting your time."
+
+Mr. Cuthbert smiled broadly, and Honora smiled too.
+
+Indeed, there was something ludicrous in the remark.  He assumed an
+attitude of reflection.
+
+"I imagine you wouldn't care to go over beyond Lexington Avenue, would
+you?  I didn't think to ask you."
+
+"No," she replied, blushing a little, "I shouldn't care to go over as far
+as that."
+
+He pondered a while longer, when suddenly his face lighted up.
+
+"I've got it!" he cried, "the very thing--why didn't.  I think of it?
+Dicky Farnham's house, or rather his wife's house.  I'll get it straight
+after a while,--she isn't his wife any more, you know; she married
+Eustace Rindge last month.  That's the reason it's for rent.  Dicky says
+he'll never get married again--you bet!  They planned it together, laid
+the corner-stone and all that sort of thing, and before it was finished
+she had a divorce and had gone abroad with Rindge.  I saw her before she
+sailed, and she begged me to rent it.  But it isn't furnished."
+
+"I might look at it," said Honora, dubiously.
+
+"I'm sure it will just suit you," he declared with enthusiasm.  "It's a
+real find.  We'll drive around by the office and get the keys."
+
+The house was between Fifth Avenue and Madison, on a cross street not far
+below Fifty-Ninth, and Honora had scarcely entered the little oak-
+panelled hall before she had forgotten that Mr. Cuthbert was a real
+estate agent--a most difficult thing to remember.
+
+Upstairs, the drawing-room was flooded with sunlight that poured in
+through a window with stone mullions and leaded panes extending the
+entire width of the house.  Against the wall stood a huge stone mantel of
+the Tudor period, and the ceiling was of wood.  Behind the little hall a
+cosey library lighted by a well, and behind that an ample dining-room.
+And Honora remembered to have seen, in a shop on Fourth Avenue, just the
+sideboard for such a setting.
+
+On the third floor, as Mr. Cuthbert pointed out, there was a bedroom and
+boudoir for Mrs. Spence, and a bedroom and dressing-room for Mr. Spence.
+Into the domestic arrangement of the house, however important, we need
+not penetrate.  The rent was eight thousand dollars, which Mr. Cuthbert
+thought extremely reasonable.
+
+"Eight thousand dollars!" As she stood with her back turned, looking out
+on the street, some trick of memory brought into her mind the fact that
+she had once heard her uncle declare that he had bought his house and lot
+for that exact sum.  And as cashier of Mr. Isham's bank, he did not earn
+so much in a year.
+
+She had found the house, indeed, but the other and mightier half of the
+task remained, of getting Howard into it.  In the consideration of this
+most difficult of problems Honora, who in her exaltation had beheld
+herself installed in every room, grew suddenly serious.  She was startled
+out of her reflections by a remark of almost uncanny penetration on the
+part of Mr. Cuthbert.
+
+"Oh, he'll come round all right, when he sees the house," that young
+gentleman declared.
+
+Honora turned quickly, and, after a moment of astonishment, laughed in
+spite of herself.  It was impossible not to laugh with Mr. Cuthbert, so
+irresistible and debonair was he, so confiding and sympathetic, that he
+became; before one knew it, an accomplice.  Had he not poured out to
+Honora, with a charming gayety and frankness, many of his financial
+troubles?
+
+"I'm afraid he'll think it frightfully expensive," she answered, becoming
+thoughtful once more.  And it did not occur to her that neither of them
+had mentioned the individual to whom they referred.
+
+"Wait until he's feeling tiptop," Mr. Cuthbert advised, "and then bring
+him up here in a hurry.  I say, I hope you do take the house," he added,
+with a boyish seriousness after she had refused his appeal to lunch with
+him, "and that you will let me come and see you once in a while."
+
+She lunched alone, in a quiet corner of the dining-room of one of the
+large hotels, gazing at intervals absently out of the window.  And by the
+middle of the afternoon she found herself, quite unexpectedly, in the
+antique furniture shop, gazing at the sideboard and a set of leather-
+seated Jacobean chairs, and bribing the dealer with a smile to hold them
+for a few days until she could decide whether she wished them.  In a
+similar mood of abstraction she boarded the ferry, but it was not until
+the boat had started on its journey that she became aware of a trim,
+familiar figure in front of her, silhouetted against the ruffed blue
+waters of the river--Trixton Brent's.  And presently, as though the
+concentration of her thoughts upon his back had summoned him, he turned.
+
+"Where have you been all this time?" she asked.  "I haven't seen you for
+an age."
+
+"To Seattle."
+
+"To Seattle!" she exclaimed.  "What were you doing there?"
+
+"Trying to forget you," he replied promptly, "and incidentally attempting
+to obtain control of some properties.  Both efforts, I may add, were
+unsuccessful."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Honora.
+
+"And what mischief," he demanded, "have you been up to?"
+
+"You'll never guess!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Preparing for the exodus," he hazarded.
+
+"You surely don't expect me to stay in Quicksands all winter?"  she
+replied, a little guiltily.
+
+"Quicksands," he declared, "has passed into history."
+
+"You always insist upon putting a wrong interpretation upon what I do,"
+she complained.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"What interpretation do you put on it?" he asked.
+
+"A most natural and praiseworthy one," she answered.  "Education,
+improvement, growth--these things are as necessary for a woman as for a
+man.  Of course I don't expect you to believe that--your idea of women
+not being a very exalted one."
+
+He did not reply, for at that instant the bell rang, the passengers
+pressed forward about them, and they were soon in the midst of the
+confusion of a landing.  It was not until they were seated in adjoining
+chairs of the parlour-car that the conversation was renewed.
+
+"When do you move to town?" he inquired.
+
+However simple Mr. Brent's methods of reasoning may appear to others, his
+apparent clairvoyance never failed to startle Honora.
+
+"Somebody has told you that I've been looking at houses!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Have you found one?"
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"Yes--I have found one.  It belongs to some people named Farnham--they're
+divorced."
+
+"Dicky Farnham's ex-wife," he supplied.  "I know where it is--
+unexceptionable neighbourhood and all that sort of thing."
+
+"And it's just finished," continued Honora, her enthusiasm gaining on her
+as she spoke of the object which had possessed her mind for four hours.
+"It's the most enchanting house, and so sunny for New York.  If I had
+built it myself it could not have suited me better.  Only--"
+
+"Only--"repeated Trixton Brent, smiling.
+
+"Well," she said slowly, "I really oughtn't to talk about it.  I--I
+haven't said anything to Howard yet, and he may not like it.  I ran
+across it by the merest accident."
+
+"What will you give me," he said, "if I can induce Howard to like it?"
+
+"My eternal friendship," she laughed.
+
+"That's not enough," said Trixton Brent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+INTRODUCING A REVOLUTIONIZING VEHICLE
+
+"Howard," said Honora that evening, "I've been going through houses
+to-day."
+
+"Houses!" he exclaimed, looking up from his newspaper.
+
+"And I've been most fortunate," she continued.  "I found one that Mrs.
+Farnham built--she is now Mrs. Rindge.  It is just finished, and so
+attractive.  If I'd looked until doomsday I couldn't have done any
+better."
+
+"But great Scott!" he ejaculated, "what put the notion of a town house
+into your head?"
+
+"Isn't it high time to be thinking of the winter?" she asked.  "It's
+nearly the end of September."
+
+He was inarticulate for a few moments, in an evident desperate attempt to
+rally his forces to meet such an unforeseen attack.
+
+"Who said anything about going to town?" he inquired.
+
+"Now, Howard, don't be foolish," she replied.  "Surely you didn't expect
+to stay in Quicksands all winter?"
+
+"Foolish!" he repeated, and added inconsequently, "why not?"
+
+"Because," said Honora, calmly, "I have a life to lead as well as you."
+
+"But you weren't satisfied until you got to Quicksands, and now you want
+to leave it."
+
+"I didn't bargain to stay here in the winter," she declared.  "You know
+very well that if you were unfortunate it would be different.  But you're
+quite prosperous."
+
+"How do you know?" he demanded unguardedly.
+
+"Quicksands tells me," she said.  "It is--a little humiliating not to
+have more of your confidence, and to hear such things from outsiders."
+
+"You never seemed interested in business matters," he answered uneasily.
+
+"I should be," said Honora, "if you would only take the trouble to tell
+me about them."  She stood up.  "Howard, can't you see that it is making
+us--grow apart?  If you won't tell me about yourself and what you're
+doing, you drive me to other interests.  I am your wife, and I ought to
+know--I want to know.  The reason I don't understand is because you've
+never taken the trouble to teach me.  I wish to lead my own life, it is
+true--to develop.  I don't want to be like these other women down here.
+I--I was made for something better.  I'm sure of it.  But I wish my life
+to be joined to yours, too--and it doesn't seem to be.  And sometimes--
+I'm afraid I can't explain it to you--sometimes I feel lonely and
+frightened, as though I might do something desperate.  And I don't
+know what's going to become of me."
+
+He laid down his newspaper and stared at her helplessly, with the air of
+a man who suddenly finds himself at sea in a small boat without oars.
+
+"Oh, you can't understand!" she cried.  "I might have known you never
+could."
+
+He was, indeed, thoroughly perplexed and uncomfortable: unhappy might not
+be too strong a word.  He got up awkwardly and put his hand on her arm.
+She did not respond.  He drew her, limp and unresisting, down on the
+lounge beside him.
+
+"For heaven's sake, what is the matter, Honora?" he faltered.  "I--I
+thought we were happy.  You were getting on all right, and seemed to be
+having a good time down here.  You never said anything about--this."
+
+She turned her head and looked at him--a long, searching look with
+widened eyes.
+
+"No," she said slowly, "you don't understand.  I suppose it isn't your
+fault."
+
+"I'll try," he said, "I don't like to see you--upset like this.  I'll do
+anything I can to make you happy."
+
+"Not things, not--not toys," Trixton Brent's expression involuntarily
+coming to her lips.  "Oh, can't you see I'm not that kind of a woman?
+I don't want to be bought.  I want you, whatever you are, if you are.
+I want to be saved.  Take care of me--see a little more of me--be
+a little interested in what I think.  God gave me a mind, and--other men
+have discovered it.  You don't know, you can't know, what temptations you
+subject me to.  It isn't right, Howard.  And oh, it is humiliating not to
+be able to interest one's husband."
+
+"But you do interest me," he protested.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Not so much as your business," she said; "not nearly so much."
+
+"Perhaps I have been too absorbed," he confessed.  "One thing has
+followed another.  I didn't suspect that you felt this way.  Come, I'll
+try to brace up."  He pressed her to him.  "Don't feel badly.  You're
+overwrought.  You've exaggerated the situation, Honora.  We'll go in on
+the eight o'clock train together and look at the house--although I'm
+afraid it's a little steep," he added cautiously.
+
+"I don't care anything about the house," said Honora.  "I don't want it."
+
+"There!" he said soothingly, "you'll feel differently in the morning.
+We'll go and look at it, anyway."
+
+Her quick ear, however, detected an undertone which, if not precisely
+resentment, was akin to the vexation that an elderly gentleman might be
+justified in feeling who has taken the same walk for twenty years, and is
+one day struck by a falling brick.  Howard had not thought of consulting
+her in regard to remaining all winter in Quicksands.  And, although he
+might not realize it himself, if he should consent to go to New York one
+reason for his acquiescence would be that the country in winter offered
+a more or less favourable atmosphere for the recurrence of similar
+unpleasant and unaccountable domestic convulsions.  Business demands
+peace at any price.  And the ultimatum at Rivington, though delivered in
+so different a manner, recurred to him.
+
+The morning sunlight, as is well known, is a dispeller of moods, a
+disintegrator of the night's fantasies.  It awoke Honora at what for her
+was a comparatively early hour, and as she dressed rapidly she heard her
+husband whistling in his room.  It is idle to speculate on the phenomenon
+taking place within her, and it may merely be remarked in passing that
+she possessed a quality which, in a man, leads to a career and fame.
+Unimagined numbers of America's women possess that quality--a fact that
+is becoming more and more apparent every day.
+
+"Why, Honora!" Howard exclaimed, as she appeared at the breakfast table.
+"What's happened to you?"
+
+"Have you forgotten already," she asked, smilingly, as she poured out her
+coffee, "that we are going to town together?"
+
+He readjusted his newspaper against the carafe.
+
+"How much do you think Mrs. Farnham--or Mrs. Rindge--is worth?  "he
+asked.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," she replied.
+
+"Old Marshall left her five million dollars."
+
+"What has that to do with it?" inquired Honora.
+
+"She isn't going to rent, especially in that part of town, for nothing."
+
+"Wouldn't it be wiser, Howard, to wait and see the house.  You know you
+proposed it yourself, and it won't take very much of your time."
+
+He returned to a perusal of the financial column, but his eye from time
+to time wandered from the sheet to his wife, who was reading her letters.
+
+"Howard," she said, "I feel dreadfully about Mrs. Holt.  We haven't been
+at Silverdale all summer.  Here's a note from her saying she'll be in
+town to-morrow for the Charities Conference, asking me to come to see her
+at her hotel.  I think I'll go to Silverdale a little later."
+
+"Why don't you?" he said.  "It would do you good."
+
+"And you?" she asked.
+
+"My only day of the week is Sunday, Honora.  You know that.  And I
+wouldn't spend another day at Silverdale if they gave me a deed to the
+property," he declared.
+
+On the train, when Howard had returned from the smoking car and they were
+about to disembark at Long Island City, they encountered Mr. Trixton
+Brent.
+
+"Whither away?" he cried in apparent astonishment.  "Up at dawn, and the
+eight o'clock train!"
+
+"We were going to look at a house," explained Honora, "and Howard has no
+other time."
+
+"I'll go, too," declared Mr. Brent, promptly.  "You mightn't think me a
+judge of houses, but I am.  I've lived in so many bad ones that I know a
+good one when I see it now."
+
+"Honora has got a wild notion into her head that I'm going to take the
+Farnham house," said Howard, smiling.  There, on the deck of the
+ferryboat, in the flooding sunlight, the idea seemed to give him
+amusement.  With the morning light Pharaoh must have hardened his heart.
+
+"Well, perhaps you are," said Mr. Brent, conveying to Honora his delight
+in the situation by a scarcely perceptible wink.  "I shouldn't like to
+take the other end of the bet.  Why shouldn't you?  You're fat and
+healthy and making money faster than you can gather it in."
+
+Howard coughed, and laughed a little, uncomfortably.  Trixton Brent was
+not a man to offend.
+
+"Honora has got that delusion, too," he replied.  He steeled himself in
+his usual manner for the ordeal to come by smoking a cigarette, for the
+arrival of such a powerful ally on his wife's side lent a different
+aspect to the situation.
+
+Honora, during this colloquy, was silent.  She was a little
+uncomfortable, and pretended not to see Mr. Brent's wink.
+
+"Incredible as it may seem, I expected to have my automobile ready this
+morning," he observed; "we might have gone in that.  It landed three days
+ago, but so far it has failed to do anything but fire off revolver
+shots."
+
+"Oh, I do wish you had it," said Honora, relieved by the change of
+subject.  "To drive in one must be such a wonderful sensation."
+
+"I'll let you know when it stops shooting up the garage and consents to
+move out," he said.  "I'll take you down to Quicksands in it."
+
+The prospective arrival of Mr. Brent's French motor car, which was looked
+for daily, had indeed been one of the chief topics of conversation at
+Quicksands that summer.  He could appear at no lunch or dinner party
+without being subjected to a shower of questions as to where it was, and
+as many as half a dozen different women among whom was Mrs. Chandos--
+declared that he had promised to bring them out from New York on the
+occasion of its triumphal entry into the colony.  Honora, needless to
+say, had betrayed no curiosity.
+
+Neither Mr. Shorter nor Mr. Cuthbert had appeared at the real estate
+office when, at a little after nine o'clock; Honora asked for the keys.
+And an office boy, perched on the box seat of the carriage, drove with
+them to the house and opened the wrought-iron gate that guarded the
+entrance, and the massive front door.  Honora had a sense of unreality
+as they entered, and told herself it was obviously ridiculous that she
+should aspire to such a dwelling.  Yesterday, under the spell of that
+somewhat adventurous excursion with Mr. Cuthbert, she had pictured
+herself as installed.  He had contrived somehow to give her a sense of
+intimacy with the people who lived thereabout--his own friends.
+
+Perhaps it was her husband who was the disillusionizing note as he stood
+on the polished floor of the sunflooded drawing-room.  Although bare of
+furniture, it was eloquent to Honora of a kind of taste not to be found
+at Quicksands: it carried her back, by undiscernible channels of thought,
+to the impression which, in her childhood, the Hanbury mansion had always
+made.  Howard, in her present whimsical fancy, even seemed a little
+grotesque in such a setting.  His inevitable pink shirt and obviously
+prosperous clothes made discord there, and she knew in this moment that
+he was appraising the house from a commercial standpoint.  His comment
+confirmed her guess.
+
+"If I were starting out to blow myself, or you, Honora," he said, poking
+with his stick a marmouset of the carved stone mantel, "I'd get a little
+more for my money while I was about it."
+
+Honora did not reply.  She looked out of the window instead.
+
+"See here, old man," said Trixton Brent, "I'm not a real estate dealer
+or an architect, but if I were in your place I'd take that carriage and
+hustle over to Jerry Shorter's as fast as I could and sign the lease."
+
+Howard looked at him in some surprise, as one who had learned that
+Trixton Brent's opinions were usually worth listening to.
+Characteristically, he did not like to display his ignorance.
+
+"I know what you mean, Brent," he replied, "and there may be something to
+the argument.  It gives an idea of conservativeness and prosperity."
+
+"You've made a bull's-eye," said Trixton Brent, succinctly.
+
+"But--but I'm not ready to begin on this scale," objected Howard.
+
+"Why," cried Brent, with evident zest--for he was a man who enjoyed sport
+in all its forms, even to baiting the husbands of his friends,--"when I
+first set eyes on you, old fellow, I thought you knew a thing or two,
+and you've made a few turns since that confirmed the opinion.  But I'm
+beginning to perceive that you have limitations.  I could sit down here
+now, if there were any place to sit, and calculate how much living in
+this house would be worth to me in Wall Street."
+
+Honora, who had been listening uneasily, knew that a shrewder or more
+disturbing argument could not have been used on her husband; and it came
+from Trixton Brent--to Howard at least--ex cathedra.  She was filled with
+a sense of shame, which was due not solely to the fact that she was a
+little conscience-stricken because of her innocent complicity, nor that
+her husband did not resent an obvious attempt of a high-handed man to
+browbeat him; but also to the feeling that the character of the
+discussion had in some strange way degraded the house itself.  Why
+was it that everything she touched seemed to become contaminated?
+
+"There's no use staying any longer," she said.  "Howard doesn't like it."
+
+"I didn't say so," he interrupted.  "There's something about the place
+that grows on you.  If I felt I could afford it--"
+
+"At any rate," declared Honora, trying to control her voice, "I've
+decided, now I've seen it a second time, that I don't want it.  I only
+wished him to look at it," she added, scornfully aware that she was
+taking up the cudgels in his behalf.  But she could not bring herself,
+in Brent's presence, to declare that the argument of the rent seemed
+decisive.
+
+Her exasperation was somewhat increased by the expression on Trixton
+Brent's face, which plainly declared that he deemed her last remarks to
+be the quintessence of tactics; and he obstinately refused, as they went
+down the stairs to the street, to regard the matter as closed.
+
+"I'll take him down town in the Elevated," he said, as he put her into
+the carriage.  "The first round's a draw."
+
+She directed the driver to the ferry again, and went back to Quicksands.
+Several times during the day she was on the point of telephoning Brent
+not to try to persuade Howard to rent the house, and once she even got
+so far as to take down the receiver.  But when she reflected, it seemed
+an impossible thing to do.  At four o'clock she herself was called to the
+telephone by Mr. Cray, a confidential clerk in Howard's office, who
+informed her that her husband had been obliged to leave town suddenly on
+business, and would not be home that night.
+
+"Didn't he say where he was going?" asked Honora.
+
+"He didn't even tell me, Mrs. Spence," Cray replied, and Mr. Dallam
+doesn't know."
+
+"Oh, dear," said Honora, "I hope he realizes that people are coming for
+dinner to-morrow evening."
+
+"I'm positive, from what he said, that he'll be back some time
+to-morrow," Cray reassured her.
+
+She refused an invitation to dine out, and retired shortly after her own
+dinner with a novel so distracting that she gradually regained an equable
+frame of mind.  The uneasiness, the vague fear of the future, wore away,
+and she slept peacefully.  In the morning, however; she found on her
+breakfast tray a note from Trixton Brent.
+
+Her first feeling after reading it was one of relief that he had not
+mentioned the house.  He had written from a New York club, asking her to
+lunch with him at Delmonico's that day and drive home in the motor.  No
+answer was required: if she did not appear at one o'clock, he would know
+she couldn't come.
+
+Honora took the eleven o'clock train, which gave her an hour after she
+arrived in New York to do as she pleased.  Her first idea, as she stood
+for a moment amidst the clamour of the traffic in front of the ferry
+house, was to call on Mrs. Holt at that lady's hotel; and then she
+remembered that the Charities Conference began at eleven, and decided to
+pay a visit to Madame Dumond, who made a specialty of importing novelties
+in dress.  Her costume for the prospective excursion in the automobile
+had cost Honora some thought that morning.  As the day was cool, she had
+brought along an ulster that was irreproachable.  But how about the hat
+and veil?
+
+Madame Dumond was enchanted.  She had them both,--she had landed with
+them only last week.  She tried them on Honora, and stood back with her
+hands clasped in an ecstasy she did not attempt to hide.  What a
+satisfaction to sell things to Mrs. Spence!  Some ladies she could
+mention would look like frights in them, but Madame Spence had 'de la
+race'.  She could wear anything that was chic.  The hat and veil, said
+Madame, with a simper, were sixty dollars.
+
+"Sixty dollars!" exclaimed Honora.
+
+"Ah, madame, what would you?" Novelties were novelties, the United States
+Custom authorities robbers.
+
+Having attended to these important details, Honora drove to the
+restaurant in her hansom cab, the blood coursing pleasantly in her veins.
+The autumn air sparkled, and New York was showing signs of animation.
+She glanced furtively into the little mirror at the side.  Her veil was
+grey, and with the hat gave her somewhat the air of a religieuse, an
+aspect heightened by the perfect oval of her face; and something akin to
+a religious thrill ran through her.
+
+The automobile, with its brass and varnish shining in the sunlight, was
+waiting a little way up the street, and the first person Honora met in
+the vestibule of Delmonico's was Lula Chandos.  She was, as usual,
+elaborately dressed, and gave one the impression of being lost,
+so anxiously was she scanning the face of every new arrival.
+
+"Oh, my dear," she cried, staring hard at the hat and the veil, "have you
+seen Clara Trowbridge anywhere?"
+
+A certain pity possessed Honora as she shook her head.
+
+"She was in town this morning," continued Mrs. Chandos, "and I was sure
+she was coming here to lunch.  Trixy just drove up a moment ago in his
+new car.  Did you see it?"
+
+Honora's pity turned into a definite contempt.
+
+"I saw an automobile as I came in," she said, but the brevity of her
+reply seemed to have no effect upon Mrs. Chandos.
+
+"There he is now, at the entrance to the cafe," she exclaimed.
+
+There, indeed, was Trixton Brent, staring at them from the end of the
+hall, and making no attempt to approach them.
+
+"I think I'll go into the dressing-room and leave my coat," said Honora,
+outwardly calm but inwardly desperate.  Fortunately, Lula made no attempt
+to follow her.
+
+"You're a dream in that veil, my dear," Mrs. Chandos called after her.
+"Don't forget that we're all dining with you to-night in Quicksands."
+
+Once in the dressing-room, Honora felt like locking the doors and jumping
+out of the window.  She gave her coat to the maid, rearranged her hair
+without any apparent reason, and was leisurely putting on her hat again,
+and wondering what she would do next, when Mrs. Kame appeared.
+
+"Trixy asked me to get you," she explained.  "Mr. Grainger and I are
+going to lunch with you."
+
+"How nice!" said Honora, with such a distinct emphasis of relief that
+Mrs. Kame looked at her queerly.
+
+"What a fool Trixy was, with all his experience, to get mixed up with
+that Chandos woman," that lady remarked as they passed through the
+hallway.  "She's like molasses--one can never get her off.  Lucky thing
+he found Cecil and me here.  There's your persistent friend, Trixy," she
+added, when they were seated.  "Really, this is pathetic, when an
+invitation to lunch and a drive in your car would have made her so
+happy."
+
+Honora looked around and beheld, indeed, Mrs. Chandos and two other
+Quicksands women, Mrs. Randall and Mrs. Barclay, at a table in the corner
+of the room.
+
+"Where's Bessie to-day, Cecil--or do you know?" demanded Mrs. Kame,
+after an amused glance at Brent, who had not deigned to answer her.
+"I promised to go to Newport with her at the end of the week, but
+I haven't been able to find her."
+
+Cecil doesn't know," said Trixton Brent.  "The police have been looking
+for him for a fortnight.  Where the deuce have you been, Cecil?"
+
+"To the Adirondacks," replied Mr Grainger, gravely.
+
+This explanation, which seemed entirely plausible to Honora, appeared to
+afford great amusement to Brent, and even to Mrs. Kame.
+
+"When did you come to life?" demanded Brent.
+
+"Yesterday," said Mr. Grainger, quite as solemnly as before.
+
+Mrs. Kame glanced curiously at Honora, and laughed again.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Trixy," she said.
+
+"Why?"  he asked innocently.  "There's nothing wrong in going to the
+Adirondacks--is there, Cecil?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Grainger, blinking rapidly.
+
+"The Adirondacks," declared Mrs. Kame, "have now become classic."
+
+"By the way," observed Mr. Grainger, "I believe Bessie's in town to-day
+at a charity pow-wow, reading a paper.  I've half a mind to go over and
+listen to it.  The white dove of peace--and all that kind of thing."
+
+"You'd go to sleep and spoil it all," said Brent.
+
+"But you can't, Cecil!" cried Mrs. Kame.  "Don't you remember we're going
+to Westchester to the Faunces' to spend the night and play bridge?  And
+we promised to arrive early."
+
+"That's so, by George," said Mr. Grainger, and he drank the rest of his
+whiskey-and-soda.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do, if Mrs. Spence is willing," suggested Brent.
+"If you start right after lunch, I'll take you out.  We'll have plenty of
+time," he added to Honora, "to get back to Quicksands for dinner."
+
+"Are you sure?" she asked anxiously.  "I have people for dinner tonight."
+
+"Oh, lots of time," declared Mrs. Kame.  "Trixy's car is some unheard-of
+horse-power.  It's only twenty-five miles to the Faunces', and you'll be
+back at the ferry by half-past four."
+
+"Easily," said Trixton Brent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ON THE ART OF LION TAMING
+
+After lunch, while Mrs. Kame was telephoning to her maid and Mr. Grainger
+to Mrs. Faunce, Honora found herself alone with Trixton Brent in the
+automobile at a moment when the Quicksands party were taking a cab.  Mrs.
+Chandos parsed long enough to wave her hand.
+
+"Bon voyage!" she cried.  "What an ideal party!  and the chauffeur
+doesn't understand English.  If you don't turn up this evening, Honora,
+I'll entertain your guests."
+
+"We must get back," said Honora, involuntarily to Brent.  "It would be
+too dreadful if we didn't!"
+
+"Are you afraid I'll run off with you?" he asked.
+
+"I believe you're perfectly capable of it," she replied.  "If I were
+wise, I'd take the train."
+
+"Why don't you?" he demanded.
+
+She smiled.
+
+"I don't know.  It's because of your deteriorating influence, I suppose.
+And yet I trust you, in spite of my instincts and--my eyes.  I'm
+seriously put out with you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'll tell you later, if you're at a loss," she said, as Mrs. Kame and
+Mr. Grainger appeared.
+
+Eight years have elapsed since that day and this writing--an aeon in this
+rapidly moving Republic of ours.  The roads, although far from perfect
+yet, were not then what they have since become.  But the weather was dry
+and the voyage to Westchester accomplished successfully.  It was half-
+past three when they drove up the avenue and deposited Mrs. Kame and
+Cecil Grainger at the long front of the Faunce house: and Brent, who had
+been driving, relinquished the wheel to the chauffeur and joined Honora
+in the tonneau.  The day was perfect, the woods still heavy with summer
+foliage, and the only signs of autumn were the hay mounds and the
+yellowing cornstalks stacked amidst the stubble of the fields.
+
+Brent sat silently watching her, for she had raised her veil in saying
+good-by to Mrs. Kame, and--as the chauffeur was proceeding slowly--had
+not lowered it.  Suddenly she turned and looked him full in the face.
+
+"What kind of woman do you think I am?" she demanded.
+
+"That's rather a big order, isn't it?" he said.
+
+"I'm perfectly serious," continued Honora, slowly.
+
+"I'd really like to know."
+
+"Before I begin on the somewhat lengthy list of your qualities,"
+he replied, smiling, "may I ask why you'd like to know?"
+
+"Yes," she said quickly.  "I'd like to know because I think you've
+misjudged me.  I was really more angry than you have any idea of at the
+manner in which you talked to Howard.  And did you seriously suppose that
+I was in earnest when we spoke about your assistance in persuading him to
+take the house?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"You are either the cleverest woman in the world," he declared, "or else
+you oughtn't to be out without a guardian.  And no judge in possession of
+his five senses would appoint your husband."
+
+Indignant as she was, she could not resist smiling.  There was something
+in the way Brent made such remarks that fascinated her.
+
+"I shouldn't call you precisely eligible, either," she retorted.
+
+He laughed again.  But his eyes made her vaguely uneasy.
+
+"Are these harsh words the reward for my charity?  he asked.
+
+"I'm by no means sure it's charity," she said.  "That's what is troubling
+me.  And you have no right to say such things about my husband."
+
+"How was I to know you were sensitive on the subject?  he replied.
+
+"I wonder what it would be like to be so utterly cynical as you," she
+said.
+
+"Do you mean to say you don't want the house?"
+
+"I don't want it under those conditions," she answered with spirit.
+"I didn't expect to be taken literally.  And you've always insisted," she
+added, "in ascribing to me motives that--that never occurred to me.  You
+make the mistake of thinking that because you have no ideals, other
+people haven't.  I hope Howard hasn't said he'd take the house.  He's
+gone off somewhere, and I haven't been able to see him."
+
+Trixton Brent looked at her queerly.
+
+"After that last manoeuvre of yours," he said, "it was all I could do to
+prevent him from rushing over to Jerry Shorter's--and signing the lease."
+
+She did not reply.
+
+"What do these sudden, virtuous resolutions mean?  he asked.
+"Resignation?  Quicksands for life?  Abandonment of the whole campaign?"
+
+"There isn't any I campaign," she said--and her voice caught in something
+like a sob.  "I'm not that sordid kind of a person.  And if I don't like
+Quicksands, it's because the whole atmosphere seems to be charged with--
+with just such a spirit."
+
+Her hand was lying on the seat.  He covered it with his own so quickly
+that she left it there for a moment, as though paralyzed, while she
+listened to the first serious words he had ever addressed to her.
+
+"Honora, I admire you more than any woman I have ever known," he said.
+
+Her breath came quickly, and she drew her hand away.
+
+"I suppose I ought to feel complimented," she replied.
+
+At this crucial instant what had been a gliding flight of the automobile
+became, suddenly, a more or less uneven and jerky progress, accompanied
+by violent explosions.  At the first of these Honora, in alarm, leaped to
+her feet.  And the machine, after what seemed an heroic attempt to
+continue, came to a dead stop.  They were on the outskirts of a village;
+children coming home from school surrounded them in a ring.  Brent jumped
+out, the chauffeur opened the hood, and they peered together into what
+was, to Honora, an inexplicable tangle of machinery.  There followed a
+colloquy, in technical French, between the master and the man.
+
+"What's the matter?"  asked Honora, anxiously.
+
+"Nothing much," said Brent, "spark-plugs.  We'll fix it up in a few
+minutes."  He looked with some annoyance at the gathering crowd.  "Stand
+back a little, can't you?" he cried, "and give us room."
+
+After some minutes spent in wiping greasy pieces of steel which the
+chauffeur extracted, and subsequent ceaseless grinding on the crank, the
+engine started again, not without a series of protesting cracks like
+pistol shots.  The chauffeur and Brent leaped in, the bystanders parted
+with derisive cheers, and away they went through the village, only to
+announce by another series of explosions a second disaster at the other
+end of the street.  A crowd collected there, too.
+
+"Oh, dear!" said Honora, "don't you think we ought to take the train, Mr.
+Brent?  If I were to miss a dinner at my own house, it would be too
+terrible!"
+
+"There's nothing to worry about," he assured her. "Nothing broken.  It's
+only the igniting system that needs adjustment."
+
+Although this was so much Greek to Honora, she was reassured.  Trixton
+Brent inspired confidence.  There was another argument with the
+chauffeur, a little more animated than the first; more greasy plugs taken
+out and wiped, and a sharper exchange of compliments with the crowd; more
+grinding, until the chauffeur's face was steeped in perspiration, and
+more pistol shots.  They were off again, but lamely, spurting a little at
+times, and again slowing down to the pace of an ox-cart.  Their progress
+became a series of illustrations of the fable of the hare and the
+tortoise.  They passed horses, and the horses shied into the ditch: then
+the same horses passed them, usually at the periods chosen by the demon
+under the hood to fire its pistol shots, and into the ditch went the
+horses once more, their owners expressing their thoughts in language at
+once vivid and unrestrained.
+
+It is one of the blessed compensations of life that in times of
+prosperity we do not remember our miseries.  In these enlightened days,
+when everybody owns an automobile and calmly travels from Chicago to
+Boston if he chooses, we have forgotten the dark ages when these machines
+were possessed by devils: when it took sometimes as much as three hours
+to go twenty miles, and often longer than that.  How many of us have had
+the same experience as Honora!
+
+She was always going to take the train, and didn't.  Whenever her mind
+was irrevocably made up, the automobile whirled away on all four
+cylinders for a half a mile or so, until they were out of reach of the
+railroad.  There were trolley cars, to be sure, but those took forever to
+get anywhere.  Four o'clock struck, five and six, when at last the fiend
+who had conspired with fate, having accomplished his evident purpose of
+compelling Honora to miss her dinner, finally abandoned them as suddenly
+and mysteriously as he had come, and the automobile was a lamb once more.
+It was half-past six, and the sun had set, before they saw the lights
+twinkling all yellow on the heights of Fort George.  At that hour the
+last train they could have taken to reach the dinner-party in time was
+leaving the New York side of the ferry.
+
+"What will they think?" cried Honora.  "They saw us leave Delmonico's at
+two o'clock, and they didn't know we were going to Westchester."
+
+It needed no very vivid imagination to summon up the probable remarks of
+Mrs. Chandos on the affair.  It was all very well to say the motor broke
+down; but unfortunately Trixton Brent's reputation was not much better
+than that of his car.
+
+Trixton Brent, as might have been expected, was inclined to treat the
+matter as a joke.
+
+"There's nothing very formal about a Quicksands dinner-party," he said.
+"We'll have a cosey little dinner in town, and call 'em up on the
+telephone."
+
+She herself was surprised at the spirit of recklessness stealing over
+her, for there was, after all, a certain appealing glamour in the
+adventure.  She was thrilled by the swift, gliding motion of the
+automobile, the weird and unfamiliar character of these upper reaches of
+a great city in the twilight, where new houses stood alone or m rows on
+wide levelled tracts; and old houses, once in the country, were seen high
+above the roadway behind crumbling fences, surrounded by gloomy old trees
+with rotting branches.  She stole a glance at the man close beside her;
+a delightful fear of him made her shiver, and she shrank closer into the
+corner of the seat.
+
+"Honora!"
+
+All at once he had seized her hand again, and held it in spite of her
+efforts to release it.
+
+"Honora," he said, "I love you as I have never loved in my life.  As I
+never shall love again."
+
+"Oh--you mustn't say that!" she cried.
+
+"Why not?" he demanded.  "Why not, if I feel it?"
+
+"Because," faltered Honora, "because I can't listen to you."
+
+Brent made a motion of disdain with his free hand.
+
+"I don't pretend that it's right," he said.  "I'm not a hypocrite,
+anyway, thank God!  It's undoubtedly wrong, according to all moral codes.
+I've never paid any attention to them.  You're married.  I'm happy to say
+I'm divorced.  You've got a husband.  I won't be guilty of the bad taste
+of discussing him.  He's a good fellow enough, but he never thinks about
+you from the time the Exchange opens in the morning until he gets home at
+night and wants his dinner.  You don't love him--it would be a miracle if
+a woman with any spirit did.  He hasn't any more of an idea of what he
+possesses by legal right than the man I discovered driving in a cart one
+of the best hunters I ever had in my stables.  To say that he doesn't
+appreciate you is a ludicrous understatement.  Any woman would have done
+for him."
+
+"Please don't!" she implored him.  "Please don't!"
+
+But for the moment she knew that she was powerless, carried along like a
+chip on the crest of his passion.
+
+"I don't pretend to say how it is, or why it is," he went on, paying no
+heed to her protests.  "I suppose there's one woman for every man in the
+world--though I didn't use to think so.  I always had another idea of
+woman before I met you.  I've thought I was in love with 'em, but now I
+understand it was only--something else.  I say, I don't know what it is
+in you that makes me feel differently.  I can't analyze it, and I don't
+want to.  You're not perfect, by a good deal, and God knows I'm not.
+You're ambitious, but if you weren't, you'd be humdrum--yet there's no
+pitiful artifice in you as in other women that any idiot can see through.
+And it would have paralyzed forever any ordinary woman to have married
+Howard Spence."
+
+A new method of wooing, surely, and evidently peculiar to Trixton Brent.
+Honora, in the prey of emotions which he had aroused in spite of her,
+needless to say did not, at that moment, perceive the humour in it.  His
+words gave her food for thought for many months afterwards.
+
+The lion was indeed aroused at last, and whip or goad or wile of no
+avail.  There came a time when she no longer knew what he was saying:
+when speech, though eloquent and forceful, seemed a useless medium.  Her
+appeals were lost, and she found herself fighting in his arms, when
+suddenly they turned into one of the crowded arteries of Harlem.  She
+made a supreme effort of will, and he released her.
+
+"Oh!"  she cried, trembling.
+
+But he looked at her, unrepentant, with the light of triumph in his eyes.
+
+"I'll never forgive you!" she exclaimed, breathless.
+
+"I gloried in it," he replied.  "I shall remember it as long as I live,
+and I'll do it again."
+
+She did not answer him.  She dropped her veil, and for a long space was
+silent while they rapidly threaded the traffic, and at length turned into
+upper Fifth Avenue, skirting the Park.  She did not so much as glance at
+him.  But he seemed content to watch her veiled profile in the dusk.
+
+Her breath, in the first tumult of her thought, came and went deeply.
+But gradually as the street lights burned brighter and familiar sights
+began to appear, she grew more controlled and became capable of
+reflection.  She remembered that there was a train for Quicksands at
+seven-fifteen, which Howard had taken once or twice.  But she felt that
+the interval was too short.  In that brief period she could not calm
+herself sufficiently to face her guests.  Indeed, the notion of appearing
+alone, or with Brent, at that dinner-party, appalled her.  And suddenly
+an idea presented itself.
+
+Brent leaned over, and began to direct the chauffeur to a well-known
+hotel.  She interrupted him.
+
+"No," she said, "I'd rather go to the Holland House."
+
+"Very well," he said amicably, not a little surprised at this unlooked-
+for acquiescence, and then told his man to keep straight on down the
+Avenue.
+
+She began mechanically to rearrange her hat and veil; and after that,
+sitting upright, to watch the cross streets with feverish anticipation,
+her hands in her lap.
+
+"Honora?" he said.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"Raise the veil, just for a moment, and look at me."
+
+She shook her head.  But for some reason, best known to herself, she
+smiled a little.  Perhaps it was because her indignation, which would
+have frightened many men into repentance, left this one undismayed.  At
+any rate, he caught the gleam of the smile through the film of her veil,
+and laughed.
+
+"We'll have a little table in the corner of the room," he declared, "and
+you shall order the dinner.  Here we are," he cried to the chauffeur.
+"Pull up to the right."
+
+They alighted, crossed the sidewalk, the doors were flung open to receive
+them, and they entered the hotel.
+
+Through the entrance to the restaurant Honora caught sight of the red
+glow of candles upon the white tables, and heard the hum of voices.  In
+the hall, people were talking and laughing in groups, and it came as a
+distinct surprise to her that their arrival seemed to occasion no remark.
+At the moment of getting out of the automobile, her courage had almost
+failed her.
+
+Trixton Brent hailed one of the hotel servants.
+
+"Show Mrs. Spence to the ladies' parlour," said he.  And added to Honora,
+"I'll get a table, and have the dinner card brought up in a few moments."
+
+Honora stopped the boy at the elevator door.
+
+"Go to the office," she said, "and find out if Mrs. Joshua Holt is in, and
+the number of her room.  And take me to the telephone booths.  I'll wait
+there."
+
+She asked the telephone operator to call up Mr. Spence's house at
+Quicksands--and waited.
+
+"I'm sorry, madam," he said, after a little while, which seemed like half
+an hour to Honora, "but they've had a fire in the Kingston exchange, and
+the Quicksands line is out of order."
+
+Honora's heart sank; but the bell-boy had reappeared.  Yes, Mrs. Holt was
+in.
+
+"Take me to her room," she said, and followed him into the elevator.
+
+In response to his knock the door was opened by Mrs. Holt herself.  She
+wore a dove-coloured gown, and in her hand was a copy of the report of
+the Board of Missions.  For a moment she peered at Honora over the
+glasses lightly poised on the uncertain rim of her nose.
+
+"Why--my dear!" she exclaimed, in astonishment.  Honora!"
+
+"Oh," cried Honora, "I'm so glad you're here.  I was so afraid you'd be
+out."
+
+In the embrace that followed both the glasses and the mission report fell
+to the floor.  Honora picked them up.
+
+"Sit down, my dear, and tell me how you happen to be here," said Mrs.
+Holt.  "I suppose Howard is downstairs."
+
+"No, he isn't," said Honora, rather breathlessly; "that's the reason I
+came here.  That's one reason, I mean.  I was coming to see you this
+morning, but I simply didn't have time for a call after I got to town."
+
+Mrs. Holt settled herself in the middle of the sofa, the only piece of
+furniture in the room in harmony with her ample proportions.  Her
+attitude and posture were both judicial, and justice itself spoke in her
+delft-blue eyes.
+
+"Tell me all about it," she said, thus revealing her suspicions that
+there was something to tell.
+
+"I was just going to," said Honora, hastily, thinking of Trixton Brent
+waiting in the ladies' parlour.  "I took lunch at Delmomico's with Mr.
+Grainger, and Mr. Brent, and Mrs. Kame--"
+
+"Cecil Grainger?"  demanded Mrs. Holt.
+
+Honora trembled.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"I knew his father and mother intimately," said Mrs. Holt, unexpectedly.
+"And his wife is a friend of mine.  She's one of the most executive women
+we have in the 'Working Girls' Association,' and she read a paper today
+that was masterful.  You know her, of course."
+
+"No," said Honora, "I haven't met her yet."
+
+"Then how did you happen to be lunching with her husband?
+
+"I wasn't lunching with him, Mrs. Holt," said Honora;
+
+"Mr. Brent was giving the lunch."
+
+"Who's Mr. Brent?" demanded Mrs. Holt.  "One of those Quicksands people?"
+
+"He's not exactly a Quicksands person.  I scarcely know how to describe
+him.  He's very rich, and goes abroad a great deal, and plays polo.
+That's the reason he has a little place at Quicksands.  He's been awfully
+kind both to Howard and me," she added with inspiration.
+
+"And Mrs. Kame?" said Mrs. Holt.
+
+"She's a widow, and has a place at Banbury.
+
+"I never heard of her," said Mrs. Holt, and Honora thanked her stars.
+
+"And Howard approves of these mixed lunches, my dear?  When I was young,
+husbands and wives usually went to parties together."
+
+A panicky thought came to Honora, that Mrs. Holt might suddenly inquire
+as to the whereabouts of Mr. Brent's wife.
+
+"Oh, Howard doesn't mind," she said hastily.  "I suppose times have
+changed, Mrs. Holt.  And after lunch we all went out in Mr. Brent's
+automobile to the Faunces' in Westchester--"
+
+"The Paul Jones Faunces?" Mrs. Holt interrupted.
+
+"What a nice woman that young Mrs. Faunce is!  She was Kitty Esterbrook,
+you know.  Both of them very old families."
+
+"It was only," continued Honora, in desperation, "it was only to leave
+Mr. Grainger and Mrs. Kame there to spend the night.  They all said we
+had plenty of time to go and get back to Quicksands by six o'clock.  But
+coming back the automobile broke down--"
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Holt, "it serves any one right for trusting to
+them.  I think they are an invention of the devil."
+
+"And we've only just got back to New York this minute."
+
+"Who?" inquired Mrs. Holt.
+
+"Mr. Brent and I" said Honora, with downcast eyes.
+
+"Good gracious!" exclaimed the elder lady.
+
+"I couldn't think of anything else to do but come straight here to you,"
+said Honora, gazing at her friend.  "And oh, I'm so glad to find you.
+There's not another train to Quicksands till after nine."
+
+"You did quite right, my dear, under the circumstances.  I don't say you
+haven't been foolish, but it's Howard's fault quite as much as yours.
+He has no business to let you do such things."
+
+"And what makes it worse," said Honora, "is that the wires are down to
+Quicksands, and I can't telephone Howard, and we have people to dinner,
+and they don't know I went to Westchester, and there's no use
+telegraphing: it wouldn't be delivered till midnight or morning."
+
+"There, there, my dear, don't worry.  I know how anxious you feel on your
+husband's account--"
+
+"Oh--Mrs. Holt, I was going to ask you a great, great favour.  Wouldn't
+you go down to Quicksands with me and spend the night--and pay us a
+little visit?  You know we would so love to have you!"
+
+"Of course I'll go down with you, my dear," said Mrs. Holt.  "I'm
+surprised that you should think for an instant that I wouldn't.  It's my
+obvious duty. Martha!" she called, "Martha!"
+
+The door of the bedroom opened, and Mrs. Holt's elderly maid appeared.
+The same maid, by the way, who had closed the shutters that memorable
+stormy night at Silverdale.  She had, it seemed, a trick of appearing at
+crises.
+
+"Martha, telephone to Mrs. Edgerly--you know her number-and say that I am
+very sorry, but an unexpected duty calls me out of town to-night, and ask
+her to communicate with the Reverend Mr. Field.  As for staying with you,
+Honora," she continued, "I have to be back at Silverdale to-morrow night.
+Perhaps you and Howard will come back with me.  My frank opinion is, that
+a rest from the gayety of Quicksands will do you good."
+
+"I will come, with pleasure," said Honora.  "But as for Howard--I'm
+afraid he's too busy."
+
+And how about dinner?"  asked Mrs. Holt.
+
+"I forgot to say," said Honora, that Mr. Brent's downstairs.  He brought
+me here, of course.  Have you any objection to his dining with us?"
+
+"No," answered Mrs. Holt, "I think I should like to see him."
+
+After Mrs. Holt had given instructions to her maid to pack, and Honora
+had brushed some of the dust of the roads from her costume, they
+descended to the ladies' parlour.  At the far end of it a waiter holding
+a card was standing respectfully, and Trixton Brent was pacing up and
+down between the windows.  When he caught sight of them he stopped in his
+tracks, and stared, and stood as if rooted to the carpet.  Honora came
+forward.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Brent!" she cried, "my old friend, Mrs. Holt, is here, and she's
+going to take dinner with us and come down to Quicksands for the night.
+May I introduce Mr. Brent."
+
+"Wasn't it fortunate, Mr. Brent, that Mrs. Spence happened to find me?"
+said Mrs. Holt, as she took his hand.  "I know it is a relief to you."
+
+It was not often, indeed, that Trixton Brent was taken off his guard;
+but some allowance must be made for him, since he was facing a situation
+unparalleled in his previous experience.  Virtue had not often been so
+triumphant, and never so dramatic as to produce at the critical instant
+so emblematic a defender as this matronly lady in dove colour.  For a
+moment, he stared at her, speechless, and then he gathered himself
+together.
+
+"A relief?" he asked.
+
+"It would seem so to me," said Mrs. Holt.  "Not that I do not think you
+are perfectly capable of taking care of her, as an intimate friend of her
+husband.  I was merely thinking of the proprieties.  And as I am a guest
+in this hotel, I expect you both to do me the honour to dine with me
+before we start for Quicksands."
+
+After all, Trixton Brent had a sense of humour, although it must not be
+expected that he should grasp at once all the elements of a joke on
+himself so colossal.
+
+"I, for one," he said, with a slight bow which gave to his words a touch
+somewhat elaborate, "will be delighted."  And he shot at Honora a glance
+compounded of many feelings, which she returned smilingly.
+
+"Is that the waiter?" asked Mrs. Holt.
+
+"That is a waiter," said Trixton Brent, glancing at the motionless
+figure.  "Shall I call him?"
+
+"If you please," said Mrs. Holt.  "Honora, you must tell me what you
+like."
+
+"Anything, Mrs. Holt," said Honora.
+
+"If we are to leave a little after nine," said that lady, balancing her
+glasses on her nose and glancing at the card, "we have not, I'm afraid,
+time for many courses."
+
+The head waiter greeted them at the door of the dining-room.  He, too,
+was a man of wisdom and experience.  He knew Mrs. Holt, and he knew
+Trixton Brent.  If gravity had not been a life-long habit with him, one
+might have suspected him of a desire to laugh.  As it was, he seemed
+palpably embarrassed,--for Mr. Brent had evidently been conversing with
+him.
+
+"Two, sir?" he asked.
+
+"Three," said Mrs. Holt, with dignity.
+
+The head waiter planted them conspicuously in the centre of the room; one
+of the strangest parties, from the point of view of a connoisseur of New
+York, that ever sat down together.  Mrs. Holt with her curls, and her
+glasses laid flat on the bosom of her dove-coloured dress; Honora in a
+costume dedicated to the very latest of the sports, and Trixton Brent in
+English tweeds.  The dining-room was full.  But here and there amongst
+the diners, Honora observed, were elderly people who smiled discreetly as
+they glanced in their direction--friends, perhaps, of Mrs. Holt.  And
+suddenly, in one corner, she perceived a table of six where the mirth was
+less restrained.
+
+Fortunately for Mr. Brent, he had had a cocktail, or perhaps two, in
+Honora's absence.  Sufficient time had elapsed since their administration
+for their proper soothing and exhilarating effects.  At the sound of the
+laughter in the corner he turned his head, a signal for renewed merriment
+from that quarter.  Whereupon he turned back again and faced his hostess
+once more with a heroism that compelled Honora's admiration.  As a
+sportsman, he had no intention of shirking the bitterness of defeat.
+
+"Mrs. Grainger and Mrs. Shorter," he remarked, "appear to be enjoying
+themselves."
+
+Honora felt her face grow hot as the merriment at the corner table rose
+to a height it had not heretofore attained.  And she did not dare to look
+again.
+
+Mrs. Holt was blissfully oblivious to her surroundings.  She was, as
+usual, extremely composed, and improved the interval, while drinking her
+soup, with a more or less undisguised observation of Mr. Brent; evidently
+regarding him somewhat in the manner that a suspicious householder
+would look upon a strange gentleman whom he accidentally found in his
+front hall.  Explanations were necessary.  That Mr. Brent's appearance,
+on the whole, was in his favour did not serve to mitigate her suspicions.
+Good-looking men were apt to be unscrupulous.
+
+"Are you interested in working girls, Mr. Brent?" she inquired presently.
+
+Honora, in spite of her discomfort, had an insane desire to giggle.  She
+did not dare to raise her eyes.
+
+"I can't say that I've had much experience with them, Mrs. Holt," he
+replied, with a gravity little short of sublime.
+
+"Naturally you wouldn't have had," said Mrs. Holt.  "What I meant was,
+are you interested in the problems they have to face?"
+
+"Extremely," said he, so unexpectedly that Honora choked.  "I can't say
+that I've given as many hours as I should have liked to a study of the
+subject, but I don't know of any class that has a harder time.  As a
+rule, they're underpaid and overworked, and when night comes they are
+either tired to death or bored to death, and the good-looking ones are
+subject to temptations which some of them find impossible to resist, in a
+natural desire for some excitement to vary the routine of their lives."
+
+"It seems to me," said Mrs. Holt, "that you are fairly conversant with
+the subject.  I don't think I ever heard the problem stated so succinctly
+and so well.  Perhaps," she added, "it might interest you to attend one
+of our meetings next month.  Indeed, you might be willing to say a few
+words."
+
+"I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, Mrs. Holt.  I'm a rather busy man,
+and nothing of a public speaker, and it is rarely I get off in the
+daytime."
+
+"How about automobiling?" asked Mrs. Holt, with a smile.
+
+"Well," said Trixton Brent, laughing in spite of himself, "I like the
+working girls, I have to have a little excitement occasionally.  And I
+find it easier to get off in the summer than in the winter."
+
+"Men cover a multitude of sins under the plea of business," said Mrs.
+Holt, shaking her head.  I can't say I think much of your method of
+distraction.  Why any one desires to get into an automobile, I don't
+see."
+
+"Have you ever been in one?" he asked.  "Mine is here, and I was about to
+invite you to go down to the ferry in it.  I'll promise to go slow."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Holt, "I don't object to going that distance, if you
+keep your promise.  I'll admit that I've always had a curiosity."
+
+"And in return," said Brent, gallantly, "allow me to send you a cheque
+for your working girls."
+
+"You're very good," said Mrs. Holt.
+
+"Oh," he protested, I'm not in the habit of giving much to charities, I'm
+sorry to say.  I'd like to know how it feels."
+
+"Then I hope the sensation will induce you to try it again," said Mrs.
+Holt.
+
+"Nobody, Mrs. Holt," cried Honora, "could be kinder to his friends than
+Mr. Brent!"
+
+"We were speaking of disinterested kindness, my dear," was Mrs. Holt's
+reply.
+
+"You're quite right, Mrs. Holt," said Trixton Brent, beginning, as the
+dinner progressed, to take in the lady opposite a delight that surprised
+him.  "I'm willing to confess that I've led an extremely selfish
+existence."
+
+"The confession isn't necessary," she replied.  "It's written all over
+you.  You're the type of successful man who gets what he wants.  I don't
+mean to say that you are incapable of kindly instincts."  And her eye
+twinkled a little.
+
+"I'm very grateful for that concession, at any rate," he declared.
+
+"There might be some hope for you if you fell into the hands of a good
+woman," said Mrs. Holt.  "I take it you are a bachelor.  Mark my words,
+the longer you remain one, the more steeped in selfishness you are likely
+to become in this modern and complex and sense-satisfying life which so
+many people lead."
+
+Honora trembled for what he might say to this, remembering his bitter
+references of that afternoon to his own matrimonial experience.  Visions
+of a scene arose before her in the event that Mrs. Holt should discover
+his status.  But evidently Trixton Brent had no intention of discussing
+his marriage.
+
+"Judging by some of my married friends and acquaintances," he said,
+"I have no desire to try matrimony as a remedy for unselfishness."
+
+"Then," replied Mrs. Holt, "all I can say is, I should make new friends
+amongst another kind of people, if I were you.  You are quite right, and
+if I were seeking examples of happy marriages, I should not begin my
+search among the so-called fashionable set of the present day.  They are
+so supremely selfish that if the least difference in taste develops, or
+if another man or woman chances along whom they momentarily fancy more
+than their own husbands or wives, they get a divorce.  Their idea of
+marriage is not a mutual sacrifice which brings happiness through trials
+borne together and through the making of character.  No, they have a
+notion that man and wife may continue to lead their individual lives.
+That isn't marriage.  I've lived with Joshua Holt thirty-five years last
+April, and I haven't pleased myself in all that time."
+
+"All men," said Trixton Brent, "are not so fortunate as Mr. Holt."
+
+Honora began to have the sensations of a witness to a debate between
+Mephistopheles and the powers of heaven.  Her head swam.  But Mrs. Holt,
+who had unlooked-for flashes of humour, laughed, and shook her curls at
+Brent.
+
+"I should like to lecture you some time," she said; "I think it would do
+you good."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'm beyond redemption.  Don't you think so, Honora?" he asked, with an
+unexpected return of his audacity.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm not worthy to judge you," she replied, and coloured.
+
+"Stuff and nonsense," said Mrs. Holt; "women are superior to men, and
+it's our duty to keep them in order.  And if we're really going to risk
+our lives in your automobile, Mr. Brent, you'd better make sure it's
+there," she added, glancing at her watch.
+
+Having dined together in an apparent and inexplicable amity, their exit
+was of even more interest to the table in the corner than their entrance
+had been.  Mrs. Holt's elderly maid was waiting in the hall, Mrs. Holt's
+little trunk was strapped on the rear of the car; and the lady herself,
+with something of the feelings of a missionary embarking for the wilds of
+Africa, was assisted up the little step and through the narrow entrance
+of the tonneau by the combined efforts of Honora and Brent.  An
+expression of resolution, emblematic of a determination to die, if
+necessary, in the performance of duty, was on her face as the machinery
+started; and her breath was not quite normal when, in an incredibly brief
+period, they descended at the ferry.
+
+The journey to Quicksands was accomplished in a good fellowship which
+Honora, an hour before, would not have dreamed of.  Even Mrs. Holt was
+not wholly proof against the charms of Trixton Brent when he chose to
+exert himself; and for some reason he did so choose.  As they stood in
+the starlight on the platform of the deserted little station while he
+went across to Whelen's livery stable to get a carriage, Mrs. Holt
+remarked to Honora:
+
+"Mr. Brent is a fascinating man, my dear."
+
+"I am so glad that you appreciate him," exclaimed Honora.
+
+"And a most dangerous one," continued Mrs. Holt.  "He has probably, in
+his day, disturbed the peace of mind of a great many young women.  Not
+that I haven't the highest confidence in you, Honora, but honesty forces
+me to confess that you are young and pleasure-loving, and a little
+heedless.  And the atmosphere in which you live is not likely to correct
+those tendencies.  If you will take my advice, you will not see too much
+of Mr. Trixton Brent when your husband is not present."
+
+Indeed, as to the probable effect of this incident on the relations
+between Mr. Brent and herself Honora was wholly in the dark.  Although,
+from her point of view, what she had done had been amply justified by the
+plea of self-defence, it could not be expected that he would accept it in
+the same spirit.  The apparent pleasure he had taken in the present
+situation, once his amazement had been overcome, profoundly puzzled her.
+
+He returned in a few minutes with the carriage and driver, and they
+started off.  Brent sat in front, and Honora explained to Mrs. Holt the
+appearance of the various places by daylight, and the names of their
+owners.  The elderly lady looked with considerable interest at the
+blazing lights of the Club, with the same sensations she would no doubt
+have had if she had been suddenly set down within the Moulin Rouge.
+Shortly afterwards they turned in at the gate of "The Brackens."  The
+light streamed across the porch and driveway, and the sound of music
+floated out of the open windows.  Within, the figure of Mrs. Barclay
+could be seen; she was singing vaudeville songs at the piano.  Mrs.
+Holt's lips were tightly shut as she descended and made her way up the
+steps.
+
+"I hope you'll come in,", said Honora to Trixton Brent, in a low voice.
+
+"Come in !" he replied, "I wouldn't miss it for ten thousand dollars."
+
+Mrs. Holt was the first of the three to appear at the door of the
+drawing-room, and Mrs. Barclay caught sight of her, and stopped in the
+middle of a bar, with her mouth open.  Some of the guests had left.  A
+table in the corner, where Lula Chandos had insisted on playing bridge,
+was covered with scattered cards and some bills, a decanter of whiskey,
+two soda bottles, and two glasses.  The blue curling smoke from Mrs.
+Chandos' cigarette mingled with the haze that hung between the ceiling
+and the floor, and that lady was in the act of saying cheerfully to
+Howard, who sat opposite,--
+
+"Trixy's run off with her."
+
+Suddenly the chill of silence pervaded the room.  Lula Chandos, whose
+back was turned to the door, looked from Mrs. Barclay to Howard, who,
+with the other men had risen to his feet.
+
+"What's the matter?"  she said in a frightened tone.  And, following the
+eyes of the others, turned her head slowly towards the doorway.
+
+Mrs. Holt, who filled it, had been literally incapable of speech.  Close
+behind her stood Honora and Trixton whose face was inscrutable.
+
+"Howard," said Honora, summoning all the courage that remained in her,
+"here's Mrs. Holt.  We dined with her, and she was good enough to come
+down for the night.  I'm so sorry not to have been here," she added to
+her guests, "but we went to Westchester with Mrs. Kame and Mr. Grainger,
+and the automobile broke down on the way back."
+
+Mrs. Holt made no attempt to enter, but stared fixedly at the cigarette
+that Mrs. Chandos still held in her trembling fingers.  Howard crossed
+the room in the midst of an intense silence.
+
+"Glad to see you, Mrs. Holt," he said.  "Er--won't you come in and--and
+sit down?"
+
+"Thank you, Howard" she replied, "I do not wish to interrupt your party.
+It is my usual hour for retiring.
+
+"And I think, my dear," she added, turning to Honora, "that I'll ask you
+to excuse me, and show me to my room."
+
+"Certainly, Mrs. Holt," said Honora, breathlessly.
+
+"Howard, ring the bell."
+
+She led the way up the stairs to the guest-chamber with the rose paper
+and the little balcony.  As she closed the door gusts of laughter reached
+them from the floor below, and she could plainly distinguish the voices
+of May Barclay and Trixton Brent.
+
+"I hope you'll be comfortable, Mrs. Holt," she said.  "Your maid will be
+in the little room across the hall and I believe you like breakfast at
+eight."
+
+"You mustn't let me keep you from your guests, Honora."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she said, on the verge of tears, "I don't want to go to
+them.  Really, I don't."
+
+"It must be confessed," said Mrs. Holt, opening her handbag and taking
+out the copy of the mission report, which had been carefully folded,
+"that they seem to be able to get along very well without you.
+I suppose I am too old to understand this modern way of living.  How well
+I remember one night--it was in 1886--I missed the train to Silverdale,
+and my telegram miscarried.  Poor Mr. Holt was nearly out of his head."
+
+She fumbled for her glasses and dropped them.  Honora picked them up, and
+it was then she perceived that the tears were raining down the good
+lady's cheeks.  At the same moment they sprang into Honora's eyes, and
+blinded her.  Mrs. Holt looked at her long and earnestly.
+
+"Go down, my dear," she said gently, "you must not neglect your friends.
+They will wonder where you are.  And at what time do you breakfast?"
+
+"At--at any time you like."
+
+"I shall be down at eight," said Mrs. Holt, and she kissed her.
+
+Honora, closing the door, stood motionless in the hall, and presently the
+footsteps and the laughter and the sound of carriage wheels on the gravel
+died away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CONTAINING SOME REVELATIONS
+
+Honora, as she descended, caught a glimpse of the parlour maid picking up
+the scattered cards on the drawing-room floor.  There were voices on the
+porch, where Howard was saying good-by to Mrs. Chandos and Trixton Brent.
+She joined them.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" cried Mrs. Chandos, interrupting Honora's apologies, "I'm
+sure I shan't sleep a wink--she gave me such a fright.  You might have
+sent Trixy ahead to prepare us.  When I first caught sight of her,
+I thought it was my own dear mother who had come all the way from
+Cleveland, and the cigarette burned my fingers.  But I must say I
+think it was awfully clever of you to get hold of her and save Trixy's
+reputation.  Good night, dear."
+
+And she got into her carriage.
+
+"Give my love to Mrs. Holt," said Brent, as he took Honora's hand, "and
+tell her I feel hurt that she neglected to say good night to me.  I
+thought I had made an impression.  Tell her I'll send her a cheque for
+her rescue work.  She inspires me with confidence."
+
+Howard laughed.
+
+"I'll see you to-morrow, Brent," he called out as they drove away.
+Though always assertive, it seemed to Honora that her husband had an
+increased air of importance as be turned to her now with his hands in his
+pockets.  He looked at her for a moment, and laughed again.  He, too, had
+apparently seen the incident only in a humorous light.  "Well, Honora,"
+he remarked, "you have a sort of a P.  T.  Barnum way of doing things
+once in a while--haven't you?  Is the old lady really tucked away for the
+night, or is she coming down to read us a sermon?  And how the deuce did
+you happen to pick her up?"
+
+She had come downstairs with confession on her lips, and in the agitation
+of her mind had scarcely heeded Brent's words or Mrs. Chandos'.  She had
+come down prepared for any attitude but the one in which she found him;
+for anger, reproaches, arraignments.  Nay, she was surprised to find now
+that she had actually hoped for these.  She deserved to be scolded: it
+was her right.  If he had been all of a man, he would have called her to
+account.  There must be--there was something lacking in his character.
+And it came to her suddenly, with all the shock of a great contrast, with
+what different eyes she had looked upon him five years before at
+Silverdale.
+
+He went into the house and started to enter the drawing-room, still in
+disorder and reeking with smoke.
+
+"No, not in there!" she cried sharply.
+
+He turned to her puzzled.  Her breath was coming and going quickly.  She
+crossed the hall and turned on the light in the little parlour there, and
+he followed her.
+
+"Don't you feel well?" he asked.
+
+"Howard," she said, "weren't you worried?"
+
+"Worried?  No, why should I have been?  Lula Chandos and May Barclay had
+seen you in the automobile in town, and I knew you were high and dry
+somewhere."
+
+"High and dry," she repeated.  What?"
+
+"Nothing.  They said I had run off with Mr. Brent, didn't they?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Yes, there was some joking to that effect."
+
+"You didn't take it seriously?
+
+"No--why should I?"
+
+She was appalled by his lack of knowledge of her.  All these years she
+had lived with him, and he had not grasped even the elements of her
+nature.  And this was marriage!  Trixton Brent--short as their
+acquaintance had been--had some conception of her character and
+possibilities her husband none.  Where was she to begin?  How was she to
+tell him the episode in the automobile in order that he might perceive
+something of its sinister significance?
+
+Where was she to go to be saved from herself, if not to him?
+
+"I might have run away with him, if I had loved him," she said after a
+pause.  "Would you have cared?"
+
+"You bet your life," said Howard, and put his arm around her.
+
+She looked up into his face.  So intent had she been on what she had
+meant to tell him that she did not until now perceive he was preoccupied,
+and only half listening to what she was saying.
+
+"You bet your life, he said, patting her shoulder.  "What would I have
+done, all alone, in the new house?"
+
+"In the new house?" she cried.  "Oh, Howard--you haven't taken it!"
+
+"I haven't signed the lease," he replied importantly, smiling down at
+her, and thrusting his hands in his pockets.
+
+"I don't want it," said Honora; "I don't want it.  I told you that I'd
+decided I didn't want it when we were there.  Oh, Howard, why did you
+take it?"
+
+He whistled.  He had the maddening air of one who derives amusement from
+the tantrums of a spoiled child.
+
+"Well," he remarked, "women are too many for me.  If there's any way of
+pleasing 'em I haven't yet discovered it.  The night before last you had
+to have the house.  Nothing else would do.  It was the greatest find in
+New York.  For the first time in months you get up for breakfast--a
+pretty sure sign you hadn't changed your mind.  You drag me to see it,
+and when you land me there, because I don't lose my head immediately, you
+say you don't want it.  Of course I didn't take you seriously--I thought
+you'd set your heart on it, so I wired an offer to Shorter to-day, and he
+accepted it.  And when I hand you this pleasant little surprise, you go
+right up in the air."
+
+He had no air of vexation, however, as he delivered this somewhat
+reproachful harangue in the picturesque language to which he commonly
+resorted.  Quite the contrary.  He was still smiling, as Santa Claus must
+smile when he knows he has another pack up the chimney.
+
+"Why this sudden change of mind?"  he demanded.  "It can't be because you
+want to spend the winter in Quicksands."
+
+She was indeed at a loss what to say.  She could not bring herself to ask
+him whether he had been influenced by Trixton Brent.  If he had, she told
+herself, she did not wish to know.  He was her husband, after all, and it
+would be too humiliating.  And then he had taken the house.
+
+"Have you hit on a palace you like better?" he inquired, with a clumsy
+attempt at banter.  "They tell me the elder Maitlands are going abroad--
+perhaps we could get their house on the Park."
+
+"You said you couldn't afford Mrs. Rindge's house," she answered
+uneasily, "and I--I believed you."
+
+"I couldn't," he said mysteriously, and paused.
+
+It seemed to her, as she recalled the scene afterwards, that in this
+pause he gave the impression of physically swelling.  She remembered
+staring at him with wide, frightened eyes and parted lips.
+
+"I couldn't," he repeated, with the same strange emphasis and a palpable
+attempt at complacency.  "But--er--circumstances have changed since
+then."
+
+"What do you mean, Howard?" she whispered.
+
+The corners of his mouth twitched in the attempt to repress a smile.
+
+"I mean," he said, "that the president of a trust company can afford to
+live in a better house than the junior partner of Dallam and Spence."
+
+"The president of a trust company!" Honora scarcely recognized her own
+voice--so distant it sounded.  The room rocked, and she clutched the arm
+of a chair and sat down.  He came and stood over her.
+
+"I thought that would surprise you some," he said, obviously pleased by
+these symptoms.  "The fact is, I hadn't meant to break it to you until
+morning.  But I think I'll go in on the seven thirty-five."  (He glanced
+significantly up at the ceiling, as though Mrs. Holt had something to do
+with this decision.) "President of the Orange Trust Company at forty
+isn't so bad, eh?"
+
+"The Orange Trust Company?  Did you say the Orange Trust Company?"
+
+"Yes."  He produced a cigarette.  "Old James Wing and Brent practically
+control it.  You see, if I do say it myself, I handled some things pretty
+well for Brent this summer, and he's seemed to appreciate it.  He and
+Wing were buying in traction stocks out West.  But you could have knocked
+me down with a paper-knife when he came to me--"
+
+"When did he come to you?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"Yesterday.  We went down town together, you remember, and he asked me
+to step into his office.  Well, we talked it over, and I left on the one
+o'clock for Newport to see Mr. Wing.  Wonderful old man!  I sat up with
+him till midnight--it wasn't any picnic" .  .  .
+
+More than once during the night Honora awoke with a sense of oppression,
+and each time went painfully through the whole episode from the evening--
+some weeks past when Trixton Brent had first mentioned the subject of the
+trust company, to the occurrence in the automobile and Howard's
+triumphant announcement.  She had but a vague notion of how that scene
+had finished; or of how, limply, she had got to bed.  Round and round the
+circle she went in each waking period.  To have implored him to
+relinquish the place had been waste of breath; and then--her reasons?
+These were the moments when the current was strongest, when she grew
+incandescent with humiliation and pain; when stray phrases in red letters
+of Brent's were illuminated.  Merit!  He had a contempt for her husband
+which he had not taken the trouble to hide.  But not a business contempt.
+"As good as the next man," Brent had said--or words to that effect.  "As
+good as the next man!"  Then she had tacitly agreed to the bargain, and
+refused to honour the bill!  No, she had not, she had not.  Before God,
+she was innocent of that!  When she reached this point it was always to
+James Wing that she clung--the financier, at least, had been impartial.
+And it was he who saved her.
+
+At length she opened her eyes to discover with bewilderment that the room
+was flooded with light, and then she sprang out of bed and went to the
+open window.  To seaward hung an opal mist, struck here and there with
+crimson.  She listened; some one was whistling an air she had heard
+before--Mrs. Barclay had been singing it last night!  Wheels crunched the
+gravel--Howard was going off.  She stood motionless until the horse's
+hoofs rang on the highroad, and then hurried into her dressing-gown and
+slippers and went downstairs to the telephone and called a number.
+
+"Is this Mr. Brent's?  Will you say to Mr. Brent that Mrs. Spence would
+be greatly, obliged if he stopped a moment at her house before going to
+town?  Thank you."
+
+She returned to her room and dressed with feverish haste, trying to
+gather her wits for an ordeal which she felt it would have killed her to
+delay.  At ten minutes to eight she emerged again and glanced anxiously
+at Mrs. Holt's door; and scarcely had she reached the lower hall before
+he drove into the circle.  She was struck more forcibly than ever by the
+physical freshness of the man, and he bestowed on her, as he took her
+hand, the peculiar smile she knew so well, that always seemed to have an
+enigma behind it.  At sight and touch of him the memory of what she had
+prepared to say vanished.
+
+"Behold me, as ever, your obedient servant," he said, as he followed her
+into the screened-off portion of the porch.
+
+"You must think it strange that I sent for you, I know," she cried, as
+she turned to him.  "But I couldn't wait.  I--I did not know until last
+night.  Howard only told me then.  Oh, you didn't do it for me!  Please
+say you didn't do it for me!"
+
+"My dear Honora," replied Trixton Brent, gravely, "we wanted your husband
+for his abilities and the valuable services he can render us."
+
+She stood looking into his eyes, striving to penetrate to the soul
+behind, ignorant or heedless that others before her had tried and failed.
+He met her gaze unflinchingly, and smiled.
+
+"I want the truth," she craved.
+
+"I never lie--to a woman," he said.
+
+"My life--my future depends upon it," she went on.  "I'd rather scrub
+floors, I'd rather beg--than to have it so.  You must believe me!"
+
+"I do believe you," he affirmed.  And he said it with a gentleness and a
+sincerity that startled her.
+
+"Thank you," she answered simply.  And speech became very difficult.
+"If--if I haven't been quite fair with you--Mr. Brent, I am sorry.  I--I
+liked you, and I like you to-day better than ever before.  And I can
+quite see now how I must have misled you into thinking--queer things
+about me.  I didn't mean to.  I have learned a lesson."
+
+She took a deep, involuntary breath.  The touch of lightness in his reply
+served to emphasize the hitherto unsuspected fact that sportsmanship in
+Trixton Brent was not merely a code, but assumed something of the
+grandeur of a principle.
+
+"I, too, have learned a lesson," he replied.  "I have learned the
+difference between nature and art.  I am something of a connoisseur in
+art.  I bow to nature, and pay my bets."
+
+"Your bets?" she asked, with a look.
+
+"My renunciations, forfeits, whatever you choose to call them.  I have
+been fairly and squarely beaten--but by nature, not by art.  That is my
+consolation."
+
+Laughter struck into her eyes like a shaft of sunlight into a well; her
+emotions were no longer to be distinguished.  And in that moment she
+wondered what would have happened if she had loved this man, and why
+she had not.  And when next he spoke, she started.
+
+"How is my elderly dove-coloured friend this morning?" he asked.  "That
+dinner with her was one of the great events of my life.  I didn't suppose
+such people existed any more."
+
+"Perhaps you'll stay to breakfast with her," suggested Honora, smiling.
+"I know she'd like to see you again."
+
+"No, thanks," he said, taking her hand, "I'm on my way to the train--I'd
+quite forgotten it.  Au revoir!"  He reached the end of the porch,
+turned, and called back, "As a 'dea ex machina', she has never been
+equalled."
+
+Honora stood for a while looking after him, until she heard a footstep
+behind her,--Mrs. Holt's.
+
+"Who was that, my dear?" she asked, "Howard?"
+
+"Howard has gone, Mrs. Holt," Honora replied, rousing herself.  "I must
+make his apologies.  It was Mr. Brent."
+
+"Mr. Brent!" the good lady repeated, with a slight upward lift of the
+faint eyebrows.  "Does he often call this early?"
+
+Honora coloured a little, and laughed.
+
+"I asked him to breakfast with you, but be had to catch a train.  He--
+wished to be remembered.  He took such a fancy to you."
+
+"I am afraid," said Mrs. Holt, "that his fancy is a thing to be avoided.
+Are you coming to Silverdale with me, Honora?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Holt," she replied, slipping her arm through that of her
+friend, "for as long as you will let me stay."
+
+And she left a note for Howard to that effect.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Thinking that because you have no ideals, other people haven't
+
+
+
+
+
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