Mrs. Hurstwood was not aware of any of her husband’s moral defections, though she might readily have suspected his tendencies, which she well understood.  She was a woman upon whose action under provocation you could never count.  Hurstwood, for one, had not the slightest idea of what she would do under certain circumstances.  He had never seen her thoroughly aroused.  In fact, she was not a woman who would fly into a passion.  She had too little faith in mankind not to know that they were erring.  She was too calculating to jeopardize any advantage she might gain in the way of information by fruitless clamor.  Her wrath would never wreak itself in one fell blow.  She would wait and brood, studying the details and adding to them until her power might be commensurate with her desire for revenge.  At the same time, she would not delay to inflict any injury, big or little, which would wound the object of her revenge and still leave him uncertain as to the source of the evil.  She was a cold, self-centered woman, with many a thought of her own which never found expression, not even by so much as the glint of an eye.

Hurstwood felt some of this in her nature, though he did not actually perceive it.  He dwelt with her in peace and some satisfaction.  He did not fear her in the least—­there was no cause for it.  She still took a faint pride in him, which was augmented by her desire to have her social integrity maintained.  She was secretly somewhat pleased by the fact that much of her husband’s property was in her name, a precaution which Hurstwood had taken when his home interests were somewhat more alluring than at present.  His wife had not the slightest reason to feel that anything would ever go amiss with their household, and yet the shadows which run before gave her a thought of the good of it now and then.  She was in a position to become refractory with considerable advantage, and Hurstwood conducted himself circumspectly because he felt that he could not be sure of anything once she became dissatisfied.

It so happened that on the night when Hurstwood, Carrie, and Drouet were in the box at McVickar’s, George, Jr., was in the sixth row of the parquet with the daughter of H. B. Carmichael, the third partner of a wholesale dry-goods house of that city.  Hurstwood did not see his son, for he sat, as was his wont, as far back as possible, leaving himself just partially visible, when he bent forward, to those within the first six rows in question.  It was his wont to sit this way in every theatre—­to make his personality as inconspicuous as possible where it would be no advantage to him to have it otherwise.

He never moved but what, if there was any danger of his conduct being misconstrued or ill-reported, he looked carefully about him and counted the cost of every inch of conspicuity.

The next morning at breakfast his son said: 

“I saw you, Governor, last night.”

“Were you at McVickar’s?” said Hurstwood, with the best grace in the world.