“Tell me something of his early life,” said Ethel Wing.

.....................

There is a famous river in the western part of our country that disappears into a canon, the walls of which are some thousands of feet high, and the bottom so narrow that the confined waters roar through it at breakneck speed.  Sometimes they disappear entirely under the rock, to emerge again below more furiously than ever.  From the river-bed can be seen, far, far above, a blue ribbon of sky.  Once upon a time, not long ago, two heroes in the service of the government of the United States, whose names should be graven in the immortal rock and whose story read wherever the language is spoken, made the journey through this canon and came out alive.  That journey once started, there could be no turning back.  Down and down they were buffeted by the rushing waters, over the falls and through the tunnels, with time to think only of that which would save them from immediate death, until they emerged into the sunlight of the plain below.

All of which by way of parallel.  For our own chronicle, hitherto leisurely enough, is coming to its canon—­perhaps even now begins to feel the pressure of the shelving sides.  And if our heroine be somewhat rudely tossed from one boulder to another, if we fail wholly to understand her emotions and her acts, we must blame the canon.  She had, indeed, little time to think.

One evening, three weeks or so after the conversation with Ethel Wing just related, Honora’s husband entered her room as her maid was giving the finishing touches to her toilet.

“You’re not going to wear that dress!” he exclaimed.

“Why not?” she asked, without turning from the mirror.

He lighted a cigarette.

“I thought you’d put on something handsome—­to go to the Graingers’.  And where are your jewels?  You’ll find the women there loaded with ’em.”

“One string of pearls is all I care to wear,” said Honora—­a reply with which he was fain to be content until they were in the carriage, when she added:  “Howard, I must ask you as a favour not to talk that way before the servants.”

“What way?” he demanded.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “if you don’t know I suppose it is impossible to explain.  You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand one thing, Honora, that you’re too confoundedly clever for me,” he declared.

Honora did not reply.  For at that moment they drew up at a carpet stretched across the pavement.

Unlike the mansions of vast and imposing facades that were beginning everywhere to catch the eye on Fifth Avenue, and that followed mostly the continental styles of architecture, the house of the Cecil Graingers had a substantial, “middle of-the-eighties” appearance.  It stood on a corner, with a high iron fence protecting the area around it.  Within, it gave one an idea of space that the exterior strangely belied; and it was furnished, not in a French, but in what might be called a comfortably English, manner.  It was filled, Honora saw, with handsome and priceless things which did not immediately and aggressively strike the eye, but which somehow gave the impression of having always been there.  What struck her, as she sat in the little withdrawing room while the maid removed her overshoes, was the note of permanence.