That he had been swept off his feet by the social and financial rush about him was quite natural.  His wife, whose early life had been one long economy, had ambitions to which there was no limit and her escape from her former thraldom had been as sudden and as swift as the upward spring of a loosened balloon.  Then again all the money needed to make the ascension successful was at her disposal.  Hence jewels, laces, and clothes; hence elaborate dinners, the talk of the town:  hence teas, receptions, opera parties, week-end parties at their hired country seat on Long Island; dances for Corinne; dinners for Corinne; birthday parties for Corinne; everything, in fact, for Corinne, from manicures to pug dogs and hunters.

His two redeeming qualities were his affection for his wife and his respect for his word.  He had no child of his own, and Corinne, though respectful never showed him any affection.  He had sent Jack to a Southern school and college, managing meanwhile the little property his father had left him, which, with some wild lands in the Cumberland Mountains, practically worthless, was the boy’s whole inheritance, and of late had treated him as if he had been his own son.

As to his own affairs, close as he sailed to the wind in his money transactions—­so close sometimes that the Exchange had more than once overhauled his dealings—­it was generally admitted that when Arthur Breen gave his word—­a difficult thing often to get—­he never broke it.  This was offset by another peculiarity with less beneficial results:  When he had once done a man a service only to find him ungrateful, no amount of apologies or atonement thereafter ever moved him to forgiveness.  Narrow-gauge men are sometimes built that way.

It was to be expected, therefore, considering the quality of Duckworth’s champagne and the impression made on Jack by his uncle’s outburst, that the ride down town in the cab was marked by anything but cheerful conversation between Breen and his nephew, each of whom sat absorbed in his own reflections.  “I didn’t mean to be hard on the boy,” ruminated Breen, “but if I had picked up everybody who wanted to know me, as Jack has done, where would I be now?” Then, his mind still clouded by the night at the club (he had not confined himself entirely to champagne), he began, as was his custom, to concentrate his attention upon the work of the day —­on the way the market would open; on the remittance a belated customer had promised and about which he had some doubt; the meeting of the board of directors in the new mining company—­“The Great Mukton Lode,” in which he had an interest, and a large one—­ etc.

Jack looked out of the windows, his eyes taking in the remnants of the autumnal tints in the Park, now nearly gone, the crowd filling the sidewalks; the lumbering stages and the swifter-moving horse-cars crammed with eager men anxious to begin the struggle of the day—­not with their hands—­that mob had swept past hours before—­ but with their brains—­wits against wits and the devil take the man who slips and falls.