She told herself the next morning that she had cried because she was frankly sorry to lose the companionship of so old and good a friend, and because now that she had been given much more important work to do, she was naturally saddened by the life she saw around her, and weakened by the foul air of the courts and streets, and the dreary environments of the tenements.  As for him, she was happy in his happiness; and she pictured how some day, when he proudly brought his young bride to this country to show her to his friends, he would ask after her.  And they would say:  “Who!  Eleanore Cuyler?  Why, don’t you know?  While you were on your honeymoon she was in the slums, where she took typhoid fever nursing a child, and died!” Or else some day, when she had grown into a beautiful sweet-faced old lady, with white hair, his wife would die, and he would return to her, never having been very happy with his first wife, but having nobly hidden from her and from the world his true feelings.  He would find her working among the poor, and would ask her forgiveness, and she could not quite determine whether she would forgive him or not.  These pictures comforted her even while they saddened her, and she went about her work, feeling that it was now her life’s work, and that she was in reality an old, old woman.  The rest, she was sure, was but a weary waiting for the end.

* * * * *

It was about six months after this, in the early spring, while Miss Cuyler was still in Rivington Street, that young Van Bibber invited his friend Travers to dine with him, and go on later to the People’s Theatre, on the Bowery, where Irving Willis, the Boy Actor, was playing “Nick of the Woods.”  Travers despatched a hasty and joyous note in reply to this to the effect that he would be on hand.  He then went off with a man to try a horse at a riding academy, and easily and promptly forgot all about it.  He did remember, as he was dressing for dinner, that he had an appointment somewhere, and took some consolation out of this fact, for he considered it a decided step in advance when he could remember that he had an engagement, even if he could not recall what it was.  The stern mental discipline necessary to do this latter would, he hoped, come in time.  So he dined unwarily at home, and was, in consequence, seized upon by his father, who sent him to the opera, as a substitute for himself, with his mother and sisters, while he went off delightedly to his club to play whist.

Travers did not care for the opera, and sat in the back of the box and dozed, and wondered moodily what so many nice men saw in his sisters to make them want to talk to them.  It was midnight, and just as he had tumbled into bed, when the nature of his original engagement came back to him, and his anger and disappointment were so intense that he kicked the clothes over the foot of his bedstead.