On her breakfast tray, amidst some invitations, was a letter from her. uncle.  This she opened first.

“Dear Honora,” he wrote, “amongst your father’s papers, which have been in my possession since his death, was a certificate for three hundred shares in a land company.  He bought them for very little, and I had always thought them worthless.  It turns out that these holdings are in a part of the state of Texas that is now being developed; on the advice of Mr. Isham and others I have accepted an offer of thirty dollars a share, and I enclose a draft on New York for nine thousand dollars.  I need not dwell upon the pleasure it is for me to send you this legacy from your father.  And I shall only add the counsel of an old uncle, to invest this money by your husband’s advice in some safe securities.” . . .

Honora put down the letter, and sat staring at the cheque in her hand.  Nine thousand dollars—­and her own!  Her first impulse was to send it back to her uncle.  But that would be, she knew, to hurt his feelings—­he had taken such a pride in handing her this inheritance.  She read the letter again, and resolved that she would not ask Howard to invest the money.  This, at least, should be her very own, and she made up her mind to take it to a bank in Thames Street that morning.

While she was still under the influence of the excitement aroused by the unexpected legacy, Mrs. Shorter came in, a lady with whom Honora’s intimacy had been of steady growth.  The tie between them might perhaps have been described as intellectual, for Elsie Shorter professed only to like people who were “worth while.”  She lent Honora French plays, discussed them with her, and likewise a wider range of literature, including certain brightly bound books on evolution and sociology.

In the eighteenth century, Mrs. Shorter would have had a title and a salon in the Faubourg:  in the twentieth, she was the wife of a most fashionable and successful real estate agent in New York, and was aware of no incongruity.  Bourgeoise was the last thing that could be said of her; she was as ready as a George Sand to discuss the whole range of human emotions; which she did many times a week with certain gentlemen of intellectual bent who had the habit of calling on her.  She had never, to the knowledge of her acquaintances, been shocked.  But while she believed that a great love carried, mysteriously concealed in its flame, its own pardon, she had through some fifteen years of married life remained faithful to Jerry Shorter:  who was not, to say the least, a Lochinvar or a Roland.  Although she had had nervous prostration and was thirty-four, she was undeniably pretty.  She was of the suggestive, and not the strong-minded type, and the secret of her strength with the other sex was that she was in the habit of submitting her opinions for their approval.

“My dear,” she said to Honora, “you may thank heaven that you are still young enough to look beautiful in negligee.  How far have you got?  Have you guessed of which woman Vivarce was the lover?  And isn’t it the most exciting play you’ve ever read?  Ned Carrington saw it in Paris, and declares it frightened him into being good for a whole week!”