Meanwhile her second visitor had, like the first, employed the interval in a critical survey of the glories of the new furniture, but with apparently more compassion than resentment in his manner.  Once only had his expression changed.  Over the fireplace hung a large photograph of Mr. Spencer Tucker.  It was retouched, refined, and idealized in the highest style of that polite and diplomatic art.  As Captain Poindexter looked upon the fringed hazel eyes, the drooping raven mustache, the clustering ringlets, and the Byronic full throat and turned-down collar of his friend, a smile of exhausted humorous tolerance and affectionate impatience curved his lips.  “Well, you are a fool, aren’t you?” he apostrophized it half audibly.

He was standing before the picture as she entered.  Even in the trying contiguity of that peerless work he would have been called a fine-looking man.  As he advanced to greet her, it was evident that his military title was not one of the mere fanciful sobriquets of the locality.  In his erect figure and the disciplined composure of limb and attitude there were still traces of the refined academic rigors of West Point.  The pliant adaptability of Western civilization, which enabled him, three years before, to leave the army and transfer his executive ability to the more profitable profession of the law, had loosed sash and shoulder-strap, but had not entirely removed the restraint of the one, nor the bearing of the other.

“Spencer is in Sacramento,” began Mrs. Tucker in languid explanation, after the first greetings were over.

“I knew he was not here,” replied Captain Poindexter gently, as he drew the proffered chair towards her, “but this is business that concerns you both.”  He stopped and glanced upwards at the picture.  “I suppose you know nothing of his business?  Of course not,” he added reassuringly, “nothing, absolutely nothing, certainly.”  He said this so kindly, and yet so positively, as if to promptly dispose of that question before going further, that she assented mechanically.  “Well, then, he’s taken some big risks in the way of business, and—­well, things have gone bad with him, you know.  Very bad!  Really, they couldn’t be worse!  Of course it was dreadfully rash and all that,” he went on, as if commenting upon the amusing waywardness of a child; “but the result is the usual smash-up of everything, money, credit, and all!” He laughed and added, “Yes, he’s got cut off—­mules and baggage regularly routed and dispersed!  I’m in earnest.”  He raised his eyebrows and frowned slightly, as if to deprecate any corresponding hilarity on the part of Mrs. Tucker, or any attempt to make too light of the subject, and then rising, placed his hands behind his back, beamed half-humorously upon her from beneath her husband’s picture, and repeated, “That’s so.”

Mrs. Tucker instinctively knew that he spoke the truth, and that it was impossible for him to convey it in any other than his natural manner; but between the shock and the singular influence of that manner she could at first only say, “You don’t mean it!” fully conscious of the utter inanity of the remark, and that it seemed scarcely less cold-blooded than his own.