To Gabriella’s surprise, her father-in-law, who had appeared inert and listless at breakfast, became, in the stimulating presence of the judge, not only awake, but mildly animated.  She had felt before the charm in his scholarly face, with its look of detached spirituality so strangely out of keeping with the calling he pursued; and she recognized now the quality of controlled force which had enabled him to hold his own in the financial whirlpool of his country.  Had the girl known more of life, she would have understood that in the American business world there were hundreds of such men winning their way and leaving their mark at that moment of history—­men whose natures were redeemed from grossness by the peculiar idealism they infused into their material battles.  Of Scotch-Irish inheritance, the direct descendant of one Gregory Truesdale, who had died a martyr for Presbyterianism, Archibald Fowler was inspired by something of the austere devotion which had fortified his religious ancestor.  Since his college days his private life had been irreproachable.  Though he was a stronger character than his wife, he regarded her with almost superstitious reverence, and made no decision above Wall Street without consulting her.  His heart, and as much of his time as he could spare from business, were hers, and she made the most of them.  Women, as women, did not attract him, and he avoided them except at his own table, where custom constrained him to be polite.  After a few courteous words to Mrs. Crowborough, he had turned with relief to her husband.

“You’ve got a bright chap in your office, Stanley,” he said; “that fellow Latham.  I was talking to him this morning.  He’s from Colorado, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yes, they’re all from the West now,” responded the judge—­he had sat on the bench in his youth.  “Ten years ago the bright ones were from the South, but you Southerners are outstripped to-day, and it’s the men from the West who are doing it.  There’s a fundamental reason there, I suppose, if you go deep enough,” he added, fingering the ends of his short gray moustache while he kept an eye on his champagne glass.  “We’ve done with mere classifying and imitation, and we’re waiting for a fresh explosion of raw energy.  Now for pure constructive imagination the North and South don’t hold a candle—­they simply don’t hold a candle—­to the West.  Mark my words, in twenty-five years there’ll hardly be a big railroad man in the country who wasn’t born in sight of the Rockies.”  Unlike Mr. Fowler, whose mind ran in a groove leading directly to business, the judge had a natural bent toward generalization, and when dining, preferred to discuss impersonal topics.  He was a tall, florid man with an immense paunch flattened by artificial devices, and a vitality so excessive that it overflowed in numberless directions—­in his hearty animal appetites, in his love of sports, in his delight in the theatre and literature, particularly in novels of the sentimental and romantic school,