But, indeed, her hopes were not all surrendered in a moment.  She had more spirit than her husband in their calamity.  She was, in fact, a born gambler; she had the qualities of her temperament, and would not believe that courage and luck could not retrieve, at least partially, their fortune.  It seemed incredible in the Street that the widow of Henderson should have given over her property so completely to her second husband, and it was a surprise to find that there was very little of value that the assignment of Mavick did not carry with it.  The Street did not know the guilty secret between Mavick and his wife that made them cowards to each other.  Nor did it understand that Carmen was the more venturesome gambler of the two, and that gradually, for the success of promising schemes, she had thrown one thing after another into the common speculation, until practically all the property stood in Mavick’s name.  Was she a fool in this, as so many women are about their separate property, or was she cheated?

The palace on Fifth Avenue was not even in her name.  When she realized that, there was a scene—­but this is not a history of the quarrels of Carmen and her husband after the break-down.

The reader would not be interested—­the public of the time were not—­in the adjustment of Mavick and his wife to their new conditions.  The broken-down, defeated bankrupt is no novelty in Wall Street, the man struggling to keep his foothold in the business of the Street, and descending lower and lower in the scale.  The shrewd curbstone broker may climb to a seat in the Stock Exchange; quite as often a lord of the Board, a commander of millions, may be reduced to the seedy watcher of the bulletin-board in a bucket-shop.

At first, in the excitement and the confusion, amid the debris of so much possible wealth, Mavick kept a sort of position, and did not immediately feel the pinch of vulgar poverty.  But the day came when all illusion vanished, and it was a question of providing from day to day for the small requirements of the house in Irving Place.

It was not a cheerful household; reproaches are hard to bear when physical energy is wanting to resist them.  Mavick had visibly aged during the year.  It was only in his office that he maintained anything of the spruce appearance and ‘sang froid’ which had distinguished the diplomatist and the young adventurer.  At home he had fallen into the slovenliness that marks a disappointed old age.  Was Mrs. Mavick peevish and unreasonable?  Very likely.  And had she not reason to be?  Was she, as a woman, any more likely to be reconciled to her fate when her mirror told her, with pitiless reflection, that she was an old woman?

Philip waited.  Under the circumstances would not both Philip and Evelyn have been justified in disregarding the prohibition that forbade their meeting or even writing to each other?  It may be a nice question, but it did not seem so to these two, who did not juggle with their consciences.  Philip had given his word.  Evelyn would tolerate no concealments; she was just that simple-minded in her filial notions.