Simon Darche stood at the window of his study, as Dolly and Vanbrugh entered the house. He was, at that time, about seventy-five years of age, and the life he had led had told upon him, as an existence of over excitement ultimately tells upon all but the very strong. Physically, he was a fine specimen of the American old gentleman. He was short, well knit, and still fairly erect; his thick creamy-white hair was smoothly brushed and parted behind, as his well-trimmed white beard was carefully combed and parted before. He had bushy eyebrows in which there were still some black threads. His face was ruddy and polished, like fine old pink silk that has been much worn. But his blue eyes had a vacant look in them, and the redness of the lids made them look weak; the neck was shrunken at the back and just behind the ears, and though the head was well poised on the shoulders, it occasionally shook a little, or dropped suddenly out of the perpendicular, forwards or to one side, not as though nodding, but as though the sinews were gone, so that it depended altogether upon equilibrium and not at all upon muscular tension for its stability. This, however, was almost the only outward sign of physical weakness. Simon Darche still walked with a firm step, and signed his name in a firm round hand at the foot of the documents brought to him by his son for signature.

He had perfect confidence in John's judgment, discretion and capacity, for he and his son had worked together for nearly twenty years, and John had never during that time contradicted him. Since the business had continued to prosper through fair and foul financial weather, this was, in Simon Darche's mind, a sufficient proof of John's great superiority of intelligence. The Company's bonds and stock had a steady value on the market, the interest on the bonds was paid regularly and the Company's dividends were uniformly large. Simon Darche continued to be President, and John Darche had now been Treasurer during more than five years. Altogether, the Company had proved itself to be a solid concern, capable of surviving stormy days and of navigating serenely in the erratic flood and ebb of the down-town tide. It was, indeed, apparent that before long a new President must be chosen, and the choice was likely to fall upon John. In the ordinary course of things a man of Simon Darche's age could not be expected to bear the weight of such responsibility much longer; but so far as any one knew, his faculties were still unimpaired and his strength was still quite equal to any demands which should be made upon it, in the ordinary course of events. Of the business done by the Company, it is sufficient to say that it was an important branch of manufacture, that the controlling interest was generally in the hands of the Darches themselves and that its value largely depended upon the possession of certain patents which, of course, would ultimately expire.

Simon Darche stood at the window of his study and looked out, smoking a large, mild cigar which he occasionally withdrew from his lips and contemplated thoughtfully before knocking off the ash, and returning it to his mouth. It was a very fine cigar indeed, equal in quality to everything which Simon Darche had consumed during the greater part of his life, and he intended to enjoy it to the end, as he had enjoyed most things ever since he had been young. John, he often said, did not know how to enjoy anything; not that John was in a hurry, or exhibited flagrantly bad taste, or professed not to care—on the contrary, the younger man was deliberate, thoughtful and fastidious in his requirements—but there was an odd strain of asceticism in him, which his father had never understood. It certainly was not of a religious nature, but it would have gone well together with a saintly disposition such as John did not possess. Perhaps indeed, John had the saintly temperament without the sanctity, and that, after all, may be better than nothing. He was thinner than his father and of a paler complexion; his hair was almost red, if not quite, and his eyes were blue—a well-built man, not ungraceful but a little angular, careful of his appearance and possessed of perfect taste in regard to dress, if in nothing else. He bestowed great attention upon his hands, which were small with slender fingers pointed at the tips, and did not seem to belong to the same epoch as the rest of him; they were almost unnaturally white, but to his constant annoyance they had an unlucky propensity to catch the dust, as one says of some sorts of cloth. If it be written down that a man has characteristically clean hands, some critic will be sure to remark that gentlemen are always supposed to have clean hands, especially gentlemen of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is a fact, nevertheless, that however purely Anglo-Saxon the possessor may be, there are hands which are naturally not clean and which neither ordinary scrubbing nor the care of the manicure can ever keep clean for more than an hour. People who are in the habit of noticing hands are well aware of the fact, which depends upon the quality of the skin, as the reputation for cleanliness itself generally does. John Darche's hands did not satisfy him as the rest of himself did.

So far as people knew, he had no vices, nor even the small tastes and preferences which most men have. He did not drink wine, he did not smoke, and he rarely played cards. He was a fairly good rider and rode for exercise, but did not know a pastern from a fetlock and trusted to others to buy his horses for him. He cared nothing for sport of any kind; he had once owned a yacht for a short time, but he had never been any further than Newport in her and had sold her before the year was out. He read a good deal in a desultory way and criticised everything he read, when he talked, but on the whole he despised literature as a trifle unworthy of a serious man's attention. His religious convictions were problematic, to say the least of it, and his outward practice took the somewhat negative form of never swearing, even when he was alone. He did not raise his voice in argument, if he ever argued, nor in anger, though he had a very bad temper. John Darche could probably say as disagreeable things as any man living, without exhibiting the slightest apparent emotion. He was not a popular man. His acquaintances disliked him; his friends feared him; his intimates and the members of his household felt that he held them at a distance and that they never really understood him. His father bestowed an almost childish admiration upon him, for which he received a partial compensation in John's uniformly respectful manner and unvarying outward deference. In the last appeal, all matters of real importance were left to the decision of Simon Darche, who always found it easy to decide, because the question, as it reached him, was never capable of more than one solution.

It is clear from what has been said that John Darche was not an amiable character. But he had one small virtue, or good trait, or good point, be it called as it may. He loved his wife, if not as a woman and a companion, at least as a possession. The fact was not apparent to the majority of people, least of all, perhaps, to Mrs. Darche herself, who was much younger than her husband and whose whole and loyal soul was filled with his cast-off beliefs, so to say, or, at least, with beliefs which he would have cast off if he had ever possessed them. Nevertheless, he was accustomed to consider her as one of his most valuable belongings, and he might have been very dangerous, had his enormous dormant jealousy been roused by the slightest show on her part of preference for any one of the half-dozen men who were intimate in the house. He, on his side, gave her no cause for doubting his fidelity. He was not loving, his manner was not affectionate, he often lost his temper and said cruel things to her in his cruel way; but so far as she knew he did not exchange ten words daily with any other woman, excepting Mrs. Willoughby, her aunt, and Dolly Maylands, her intimate friend. He was systematic in his daily comings and goings, and he regularly finished his evenings at one of the clubs. He slept little, but soundly, ate sparingly and without noticing what was offered him, drank four cups of tea and a pint of Apollinaris every day and had never been ill in his life, which promised to be long, active, uneventful and not overflowing with blessings for any one else.

At first it might seem that there was not much ground for the few words exchanged by Russell Vanbrugh and Dolly Maylands about the Darches' trouble before they entered the house. To all appearances, Simon Darche was in his normal frame of mind and had changed little during the last five years. So far as any one could judge, the Company was as solid as ever. In her outward manner and conversation Marion Darche seemed as well satisfied with her lot as she had been on the day of her marriage, when John had represented to her all that a man should be,—much that another man, whom she had loved, or liked almost to loving, in her early girlhood, had not been. The surface of her life was calm and unemotional, reflecting only the sunshine and storm of the social weather under which she had lived in the more or less close companionship of half a hundred other individuals in more or less similar circumstances.

There is just enough truth in most proverbs to make them thoroughly disagreeable. Take, for instance, the saying that wealth is not happiness. Of course it is not, any more than food and lodging, shoes and clothing, which are the ultimate forms of wealth, can be called happiness. But surely, wealth and all that wealth gives constitute a barrier against annoyance, mental and physical, which has almost as much to do with the maintenance of happiness in the end, as "climate and the affections." The demonstration is a simple one. Poverty can of itself under certain circumstances be a source of unhappiness. The possession of riches therefore is a barrier against the possibility of at least one sort of misery and relatively increases the chances of being happy on the whole. It is tolerably certain, that, without money, John Darche would have been little short of insufferable, and that his wife would have been chief among the sufferers. The presence of a great fortune preserved the equilibrium and produced upon outsiders the impression of real felicity.

Nevertheless, both Vanbrugh and Dolly Maylands, as has been seen, considered the fortune unsafe and apparent peace problematic. They were among the most intimate friends of the Darche household and were certainly better able to judge of the state of affairs than the majority. They had doubtless perceived in the domestic atmosphere something of that sultriness which foreruns a storm and sometimes precedes an earthquake, and being very much in sympathy with each other, in spite of the continual chaffing which formed the basis of their conversation, they had both begun to notice the signs of bad weather very nearly at the same time.

It must not be supposed that Mrs. Darche confided her woes to her friend, to use the current expression by which reticent people characterise the follies of others. It was not even certain at this time that she had any woes at all, but Dolly undoubtedly noticed something in her conduct which betrayed anxiety if not actual unhappiness, and Russell Vanbrugh, who, as has been observed, was intimately acquainted with many aspects of New York life, had some doubts as to the state of the Company's affairs. No one is really reticent. It would perhaps be more just to the human race as a whole to say that no two persons are capable of keeping the same secret at the same time. That is probably the reason why there is always some rumour of an approaching financial crisis, even while it is very much to the interest of all concerned to preserve a calm exterior. When a great house is about to have trouble, and even in some cases as much as two or three years before the disaster, there is a dull far-off rumble from underground, as though the foundations were trembling. There is a creaking of the timbers, an occasional and as yet unaccountable rattling of the panes, and sometimes a very slight distortion of the lines of the edifice, all proving clearly enough that a crash is at hand. As no one believes in presentiments, divinations or the gift of prophecy in these days, it is safe to assume that some one who knows the history of the thing has betrayed the secret, or has told his wife that there is a secret to be kept. In the matter of secrets there is but one general rule. If you do not wish a fact to be known, tell no one of its existence.

Concerning the particular reasons which led Dolly Maylands and Russell Vanbrugh to exchange opinions on the subject of the Darches, it is hardly necessary to speak here. The two were very intimate and had known each other for a long time, and, possibly, there was a tendency in their acquaintance to something more like affection than friendship. The fact that Dolly did not flirt with Vanbrugh in the ordinary acceptation of that word, showed that she might possibly be in love with him. As for Vanbrugh himself, no one knew what he thought and he did not intend that any one should. He had never shown any inclination to be married, though it was said that he, like many others, had been deeply attached to Mrs. Darche in former days; and Dolly, at least, believed that he still loved her friend in his heart, though she had neither the courage nor the bad taste to ask a question to which he might reasonably have refused an answer.

The only person in the household who seemed to have neither doubts nor uneasiness was old Simon Darche, and as it was more than likely that his intelligence had begun to fail, his own sense of security was not especially reassuring to others.

While Simon Darche was smoking his large mild cigar at the window, and while Dolly and Russell Vanbrugh were strolling by the railings of Gramercy Park, Mrs. Darche was seated before the fire in the library, and another friend of hers, who has a part to play in this little story and who, like Vanbrugh, was a lawyer, was trying to interest her in the details of a celebrated case concerning a will, and was somewhat surprised to find that he could not succeed. Harry Brett stood towards Marion Darche in very much the same friendly relation held by Vanbrugh in Dolly's existence. There was this difference, however, that Brett was well known to have offered himself to Mrs. Darche, who had refused him upon grounds which were not clear to the social public. Brett was certainly not so rich as John, but in all other respects he seemed vastly more desirable as a husband. He was young, fresh, good-looking, good-tempered. He belonged to a good New York family, whereas the Darches were of Canadian origin. He had been quite evidently and apparently very much in love with Marion, whereas John never seemed to have looked upon her as anything but a valuable possession, to be guarded for its intrinsic worth, and to be kept in good order and condition rather than loved and cherished. Every one had said that she should have married Brett, and when she chose John every one said that she had married his money. But then it is impossible to please every one. Brett was certainly not pleased. He had gone abroad and had been absent a long time, just when he should have been working at his profession. It was supposed, not without reason, that he was profoundly disappointed, but nevertheless, when he returned he looked as fresh and cheerful as ever, was kindly received by Mrs. Darche, civilly treated by her husband and forthwith fell into the position of especial friend to the whole family. He had made up his mind to forget all about the past, to see as much of Mrs. Darche as he could without falling in love with her a second time, as he would have called it, and he was doing his best to be happy in his own way. Within the bounds of possibility he had hitherto succeeded, and no one who wished well to him or Mrs. Darche would have desired to doubt the durability of his success. He had created an artificial happiness and spent his life in fostering the idea that it was real. Many a better man has done the same before him and many a worse may try hereafter. But the result always has been the same and in all likelihood always will be. The most refined and perfect artificiality is not nature even to him who most earnestly wishes to believe it is, and the time must inevitably come in all such lives when nature, being confronted with her image, finds it but a caricature and dashes it to pieces in wrath.

Brett's existence was indeed much more artificial than that of his old love. He had attempted to create the semblance of a new relation on the dangerous ground whereon an older and a truer one had subsisted. She, on her part, had accepted circumstances as they had formed themselves, and did her best to get what she could out of them without any attempt to deceive herself or others. Fortunately for both she was eminently a good woman, and Brett was a gentleman in heart, as well as in deed.

And now before this tale is told, there only remains the thankless task of introducing these last two principal figures in their pen-and-ink effigies.

Of Harry Brett almost enough has been said already. His happy vitality would have lent him something of beauty even if he had possessed none at all. But he had a considerable share of good looks, in addition to his height and well-proportioned frame, his bright blue eyes, his fresh complexion, and short, curly brown hair. He too, like Vanbrugh, belonged to the American type, which has regular features, arched eyebrows, and rather deep-set eyes. The lower part of his face was strong, though the whole outline was oval rather than round or square.

Rather a conventional hero, perhaps, if he is to be a hero at all, but then, many heroes have been thought to be quite average, ordinary persons, until the knot which heroism cuts was presented to them by fate. Then people discover in them all sorts of outward signs of the inward grace that can hit so very hard. Then the phrenologists descend upon their devoted skulls and discover there the cranial localities of the vast energy, the dauntless courage, the boundless devotion to a cause, the profound logic, by which great events are brought about and directed to the end. Julius CÆsar at the age of thirty was a frivolous dandy, an amateur lawyer, and a dilettante politician, in the eyes of good society in Rome.

Harry Brett, however, is not a great hero, even in this fiction—a manly fellow with no faults of any importance and no virtues of any great magnitude, young, healthy, good-looking, courageous, troubled a little with the canker of the untrue ideal which is apt to eat the common sense out of the core of life's tree, mistaken in his attempt to create in himself an artificial satisfaction in the friendship of the woman he had loved and was in danger of loving still, gifted with the clear sight which must sooner or later see through his self-made illusion, and possessed of more than the average share of readiness in speech and action—a contrast, in this respect, to Vanbrugh. The latter, from having too comprehensive a view of things, was often slow in reaching a decision. Brett was more like Mrs. Darche herself in respect of quick judgment and self-reliance at first sight, if such a novel expression is permissible.

As Marion sat before the fire apparently studying its condition and meditating a descent upon it, after the manner of her kind, she was not paying much attention to Brett's interesting story about the great lawyer who had drawn up his own will so that hardly a clause of it had turned out to be legal, and Brett himself was more absorbed in watching her than in telling the complicated tale. She was generally admitted to be handsome. Her enemies said that she had green eyes and yellow hair, which was apparently true, but they also said that she dyed the one and improved the other with painting, which was false. Her hair was naturally as fair as yellow gold, of an even colour throughout, and the shadows beneath her eyes and the dark eyebrows, which were sources of so much envy and malice, were natural and not done with little coloured sticks of greasy crayon kept in tubes made to look like silver pencil-cases, and generally concealed beneath the lace of the toilet table or in the toe of a satin slipper.

Marion Darche was handsome and looked strong, though there was rarely much colour in her face. She did not flush easily. Women who do, often have an irritable heart, as the doctors call the thing, and though their affections may be stable their circulation is erratic. They suffer agonies of shyness in youth and considerable annoyance in maturer years from the consciousness that the blood is forever surging in their cheeks at the most inopportune moment; and the more they think of it, the more they blush, which does not mend matters and often betrays secrets. Three-fourths of the shyness one sees in the world is the result of an irritable heart. Marion Darche's circulation was normal, and she was not shy.

Like many strong persons, she was gentle, naturally cheerful and generally ready to help any one who needed assistance. She had an admirably even temper—a matter, like physical courage, which depends largely upon the action of the heart and the natural quality of the nerves—and under all ordinary circumstances she ate and slept like other people. She did not look at all like Helen or Clytemnestra, and her disposition was not in the least revengeful—a quiet, tall, fair young woman, whose clear eyes looked every one calmly in the face and whose strong white hands touched things delicately but could hold firmly when she chose; carrying herself straight through a crowd, as she bore herself upright through life. Those who knew her face best admired especially her mouth and the small, well-cut, advancing chin, which seemed made to meet difficulties as a swimmer's divides the water. In figure, as in face, too, she was strong, the undulating curves were those of elasticity and energy, rather than of indolence and repose.

As Harry Brett talked and watched her he honestly tried not to wish that she might have been his wife, and when his resolution broke down he conscientiously talked on and did his best to interest himself in his own conversation. The effort was familiar to him of old, and had so often ended in failure that he was glad when the distant tinkle of the door bell announced the coming of a third person. John rarely lunched at home and old Mr. Darche was never summoned until the meal was served. Brett broke off in the middle of his story and laughed a little.

"I believe you have not understood a word of what I have been telling you," he said.

Mrs. Darche looked up suddenly, abandoned the study of the burning logs and leaned back in her chair before she answered. Then she looked at him quietly and smiled, not even attempting to deny the imputation.

"It is very rude of me, is it not? You must forgive me, to-day. I am very much preoccupied."

"You often are, nowadays," answered Brett, with a short, manlike sigh, which might have passed for a sniff of dissatisfaction.

"I know I am. I am sorry."

The door opened and Dolly Maylands entered the room, followed closely by Russell Vanbrugh.