“The president of a trust company!” Honora scarcely recognized her own voice—­so distant it sounded.  The room rocked, and she clutched the arm of a chair and sat down.  He came and stood over her.

“I thought that would surprise you some,” he said, obviously pleased by these symptoms.  “The fact is, I hadn’t meant to break it to you until morning.  But I think I’ll go in on the seven thirty-five.” (He glanced significantly up at the ceiling, as though Mrs. Holt had something to do with this decision.) “President of the Orange Trust Company at forty isn’t so bad, eh?”

“The Orange Trust Company?  Did you say the Orange Trust Company?”

“Yes.”  He produced a cigarette.  “Old James Wing and Brent practically control it.  You see, if I do say it myself, I handled some things pretty well for Brent this summer, and he’s seemed to appreciate it.  He and Wing were buying in traction stocks out West.  But you could have knocked me down with a paper-knife when he came to me—­”

“When did he come to you?” she asked breathlessly.

“Yesterday.  We went down town together, you remember, and he asked me to step into his office.  Well, we talked it over, and I left on the one o’clock for Newport to see Mr. Wing.  Wonderful old man!  I sat up with him till midnight—­it wasn’t any picnic” . . .

More than once during the night Honora awoke with a sense of oppression, and each time went painfully through the whole episode from the evening —­some weeks past when Trixton Brent had first mentioned the subject of the trust company, to the occurrence in the automobile and Howard’s triumphant announcement.  She had but a vague notion of how that scene had finished; or of how, limply, she had got to bed.  Round and round the circle she went in each waking period.  To have implored him to relinquish the place had been waste of breath; and then—­her reasons?  These were the moments when the current was strongest, when she grew incandescent with humiliation and pain; when stray phrases in red letters of Brent’s were illuminated.  Merit!  He had a contempt for her husband which he had not taken the trouble to hide.  But not a business contempt.  “As good as the next man,” Brent had said—­or words to that effect.  “As good as the next man!” Then she had tacitly agreed to the bargain, and refused to honour the bill!  No, she had not, she had not.  Before God, she was innocent of that!  When she reached this point it was always to James Wing that she clung—­the financier, at least, had been impartial.  And it was he who saved her.

At length she opened her eyes to discover with bewilderment that the room was flooded with light, and then she sprang out of bed and went to the open window.  To seaward hung an opal mist, struck here and there with crimson.  She listened; some one was whistling an air she had heard before—­Mrs. Barclay had been singing it last night!  Wheels crunched the gravel—­Howard was going off.  She stood motionless until the horse’s hoofs rang on the highroad, and then hurried into her dressing-gown and slippers and went downstairs to the telephone and called a number.