Keith was glad that he had not intimated it.  As he looked at the squire, he knew how dangerous it would be.  His face was settled into a grimness which showed how perilous it would be for the man who had deceived Phrony, if, as Keith feared, his apprehensions were well founded.

But at that moment both Phrony and Wickersham were far beyond Squire Rawson’s reach.

The evening after Phrony Tripper left New Leeds, a young woman somewhat closely veiled descended from the train in Jersey City.  Here she was joined on the platform a moment later by a tall man who had boarded the train at Washington, and who, but for his spruced appearance, might have been taken for Mr. J. Quincy Plume.  The young woman having intrusted herself to his guidance, he conducted her across the ferry, and on the other side they were met by a gentleman, who wore the collar of his overcoat turned up.  After a meeting more or less formal on one side and cordial on the other, the gentleman gave a brief direction to Mr. Plume, and, with the lady, entered a carriage which was waiting and drove off; Mr. Plume following a moment later in another vehicle.

“Know who that is?” asked one of the ferry officials of another.  “That’s F.C.  Wickersham, who has made such a pile of money.  They say he owns a whole State down South.”

“Who is the lady?”

The other laughed.  “Don’t ask me; you can’t keep up with him.  They say they can’t resist him.”

An hour or two later, Mr. Plume, who had been waiting for some time in the cafe of a small hotel not very far up-town, was joined by Mr. Wickersham, whose countenance showed both irritation and disquietude.  Plume, who had been consoling himself with the companionship of a decanter of rye whiskey, was in a more jovial mood, which further irritated the other.

“You say she has balked?  Jove!  She has got more in her than I thought!”

“She is a fool!” said Wickersham.

Plume shut one eye.  “Don’t know about that.  Madame de Maintenon said:  ‘There is nothing so clever as a good woman.’  Well, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take a drink,” said Mr. Plume, to whom this was a frequent solvent of a difficulty.

Wickersham followed his advice, but remained silent.

In fact, Mr. Wickersham, after having laid most careful plans and reached the point for which he had striven, found himself, at the very moment of victory, in danger of being defeated.  He had induced Phrony Tripper to come to New York.  She was desperately in love with him, and would have gone to the ends of the earth for him.  But he had promised to marry her; it was to marry him that she had come.  As strong as was her passion for him, and as vain and foolish as she was, she had one principle which was stronger than any other feeling—­a sense of modesty.  This had been instilled in her from infancy.  Among her people a woman’s honor was ranked higher