Moffatt explained at once, in the fewest words, as his way was when it came to business.  He was interested in a big “deal” which involved the purchase of a piece of real estate held by a number of wrangling heirs.  The real-estate broker with whom Ralph Marvell was associated represented these heirs, but Moffatt had his reasons for not approaching him directly.  And he didn’t want to go to Marvell with a “business proposition”—­it would be better to be thrown with him socially as if by accident.  It was with that object that Moffatt had just appealed to Mr. Spragg, but Mr. Spragg, as usual, had “turned him down,” without even consenting to look into the case.

“He’d rather have you miss a good thing than have it come to you through me.  I don’t know what on earth he thinks it’s in my power to do to you—­or ever was, for that matter,” he added.  “Anyhow,” he went on to explain, “the power’s all on your side now; and I’ll show you how little the doing will hurt you as soon as I can have a quiet chat with your husband.”  He branched off again into technicalities, nebulous projections of capital and interest, taxes and rents, from which she finally extracted, and clung to, the central fact that if the “deal went through” it would mean a commission of forty thousand dollars to Marvell’s firm, of which something over a fourth would come to Ralph.

“By Jove, that’s an amazing fellow!” Ralph Marvell exclaimed, turning back into the drawing-room, a few evenings later, at the conclusion of one of their little dinners.  Undine looked up from her seat by the fire.  She had had the inspired thought of inviting Moffatt to meet Clare Van Degen, Mrs. Fairford and Charles Bowen.  It had occurred to her that the simplest way of explaining Moffatt was to tell Ralph that she had unexpectedly discovered an old Apex acquaintance in the protagonist of the great Ararat Trust fight.  Moffatt’s defeat had not wholly divested him of interest.  As a factor in affairs he no longer inspired apprehension, but as the man who had dared to defy Harmon B. Driscoll he was a conspicuous and, to some minds, almost an heroic figure.

Undine remembered that Clare and Mrs. Fairford had once expressed a wish to see this braver of the Olympians, and her suggestion that he should be asked meet them gave Ralph evident pleasure.  It was long since she had made any conciliatory sign to his family.

Moffatt’s social gifts were hardly of a kind to please the two ladies:  he would have shone more brightly in Peter Van Degen’s set than in his wife’s.  But neither Clare nor Mrs. Fairford had expected a man of conventional cut, and Moffatt’s loud easiness was obviously less disturbing to them than to their hostess.  Undine felt only his crudeness, and the tacit criticism passed on it by the mere presence of such men as her husband and Bowen; but Mrs. Fairford’ seemed to enjoy provoking him to fresh excesses of slang and hyperbole.  Gradually she drew him into