“Who gave it to you, Jack?” Corinne asked in a tired voice.

“A friend of Uncle Peter’s.”

“You mean Mr. Grayson?”

“Yes.”

There was no outburst, no cry of gratitude, no flood of long-pent-up tears.  The storm had so crushed and bruised this plant that many days must elapse before it would again lift its leaves from the mud.

“It was very good of Mr. Grayson, Jack,” was all she said in answer, and then relapsed into the apathy which had been hers since the hour when the details of her husband’s dishonesty had dropped from his lips.

Poor girl! she had no delusions to sustain her.  She knew right from wrong.  Emotions never misled her.  In her earlier years she and her mother had been accustomed to look things squarely in the face, and to work out their own careers; a game of chance, it is true, until her mother’s marriage with the elder Breen; but they had both been honest careers, and they had owed no man a penny.  Garry had fought the battle for her within the last few years, and in return she had loved him as much as she was able to love anybody but she had loved him as a man of honor, not as a thief.  Now he had lied to her, had refused to listen to her pleadings, and the end had come.  What was there left, and to whom should she now turn—­she without a penny to her name—­except to her stepfather, who had insulted and despised her.  She had even been compelled to seek help from Ruth and Jack; and now at last to accept it from Mr. Grayson—­he almost a stranger.  These were the thoughts which, like strange nightmares, swept across her tired brain, taking grewsome shapes, each one more horrible than its predecessor.

At the funeral, next day, she presented the same impassive front.  Breen and her mother rode with her in the carriage to the church, and Jack and Ruth helped her alight, but she might have been made of stone so far as she evinced either sorrow or interest in what was taking place about her.  And yet nothing had been omitted by friend or foe expressive of the grief and heart-felt sorrow the occasion demanded.  Holker Morris sent a wreath of roses with a special letter to her, expressing his confidence in and respect for the man he had brought up from a boy.  A committee was present from the Society of Architects to which Garry belonged; half a dozen of his old friends from the Magnolia were present, Biffy among them; the village Council and the Board of Church Trustees came in a body, and even McGowan felt it incumbent upon him to stand up during the service and assume the air of one who had been especially bereft.  Nor were the notices in the country and city papers wanting in respect.  “One of our most distinguished citizens—­a man who has reached the topmost round of the ladder,” etc., etc., one editorial began.