At Mrs. De Peyster’s back curiosity checked him and he turned his whimsical face down upon the motionless figure.  The great Mrs. De Peyster!  He wondered what had thus changed her from the all-commanding presence of a few moments since; for within that perfection of a study he had overheard nothing.  An instant he stood thus at her back, alert to disappear upon the warning of a changing breath—­the two but an arm’s reach apart, and apparently about to go their separate ways forever—­she unconscious of him, and he equally unconscious of the seed of a common drama which their own acts had already sown—­with never a thought that ships that pass in the night may possibly alter their courses and meet again in the morning.

He slipped on out of the room, closing the door without a sound.  In the hallway he paused.  He wished to see Miss Gardner again, ignorant of the sudden fate that had befallen her.  But he decided little would be gained by trying for another meeting.  Certainly she must have relented sufficiently to have picked up the card he had given her; and perhaps she would change her mind and send him a message in care of the Reverend Mr. Pyecroft.  Anyhow, that was his best hope.

Lightly, and with a light heart—­for the presence of danger was to him a stimulant—­he went down the stairs, eyes and ears on guard against unfortunate rencontres, and eyes also instinctively noting doors and passages and articles worth a gentleman’s while.  At the front door he waited a moment until the sidewalk was empty; then he let himself out, and went down Mrs. De Peyster’s noble stone steps, his face pleasant and frank-gazing, and with the easy self-possession of departing from a call to wish a friend bon-voyage.

CHAPTER V

THE HONOR OF THE NAME

After a time Mrs. De Peyster rose totteringly from the sheeted library chair, mounted weakly to the more intimate asylum of her private sitting-room, and sat down and stared into her fire.  She was still dazed by Judge Harvey’s announcement of the decision of the New York and New England to pay no dividends.

She was not rich, as the rich count riches.  Nor did she desire a greater wealth; at least not much greater.  In fact, she looked down upon the possessors of those huge fortunes acquired during the last generation as upon beings of an inferior order.  It was blood-discs that gave her her supremacy, not vulgar discs of gold.  She had enough to maintain the De Peyster station, but just enough; and she had so adjusted her scale of living that her expenses exactly consumed her normal income—­no more, no less.

That is, had exactly consumed it, except during the last year or two.  One reason she had so resented Judge Harvey’s criticism of her manner of living was that the criticism had the unfortunate quality of being based on truth.  Of late, the struggle to maintain her inherited and rightful leadership had involved her in greatly increased expenditure, and this excess she had met in ways best known to herself.