The scene which opened upon Reuben’s eyes was like a vista of fairyland. The dark panelled room, with its dim suggestions of gold frames and heavy curtains, and its background of palms and oleanders, contributed with the reticence of richness to the glowing splendor of the table in its centre. Here all light was concentrated—light which fell from beneath ruby shades at the summits of tall candles, and softened the dazzling whiteness of the linen, mellowed the burnished gleam of the silver plate, reflected itself in tender, prismatic hues from the facets of the cut-glass decanters. There were flowers here which gave forth still the blended fragrance of their hot-house home, and fragile, painted china, and all the nameless things of luxury which can make the breaking of bread a poem.

Reuben had seen something dimly resembling this in New York once or twice at semi-public dinners. The thought that this higher marvel was in his honor intoxicated his reason. The other thought—that conceivably his future might lie all in this flower-strewn, daintily lighted path—was too heady, too full of threatened delirium, to be even entertained. With an anxious hold upon himself, he felt his way forward to self-possession. It came sooner than he had imagined it would, and thereafter everything belonged to a dream of delight.

The ladies were all dressed more elaborately than he had observed them to be on any previous occasion, and, at the outset, there was something disconcerting in this. Speedily enough, though, there came the reflection that his clothes were those in which he had raced breathlessly from the farm, in which he had faced and won the crowd outside, and then, all at once, he was at perfect ease.

He told them—addressing his talk chiefly to Mrs. Minster, who sat at the head of the table, to his left—the story of Jessica’s ride, of her fainting on her arrival, and of the furious homeward drive. From this he drifted to the final proofs which had been procured at Cadmus—he had sent Gedney home with the horses, and was to see him early in the morning—and then to the steps toward a criminal prosecution which he would summarily take.

“So far as I can see, Mrs. Minster,” he concluded, when the servant had again left the room, “no real loss will result from this whole imbroglio. It may even show a net gain, when everything is cleared up; for your big loan must really give you control of the Thessaly Manufacturing Company, in law. These fellows staked their majority interest in that concern to win your whole property in the game. They have lost, and the proceeds must go to you. Of course, it is not entirely clear how the matter will shape itself; but my notion is that you will come out winner.”

Mrs. Minster smiled complacently. “My daughters thought that I knew nothing about business!” she said, with an air of easy triumph.

The daughters displayed great eagerness to leave this branch of the matter undiscussed.

“And will it really be necessary to prosecute these men?” asked Ethel, from Reuben’s right.

The lawyer realized, even before he spoke, that not a little of his bitterness had evaporated. “Men ought to be punished for such a crime as they committed,” he said. “If only as a duty to the public, they should be prosecuted.”

He was looking at Kate as he spoke, and in her glance, as their eyes met, he read something which prompted him hastily to add:

“Of course, I am in your hands in the matter. I have committed myself with the crowd outside to the statement that they should be punished. I was full, then, of angry feelings; and I still think that they ought to be punished. But it is really your question, not mine. And I may even tell you that there would probably be a considerable financial advantage in settling the thing with them, instead of taking it before the grand jury.”

“That is a consideration which we won’t discuss,” said Kate. “If my mind were clear as to the necessity of a prosecution, I would not alter the decision for any amount of money. But my sister and I have been talking a great deal about this matter, and we feel—You know that Mr. Boyce was, for a time, on quite a friendly footing in this house.”

“Yes; I know.” Reuben bowed his head gravely.

“Well, you yourself said that if one was prosecuted, they all must be.”

“No doubt. Wendover and Tenney were smart enough to put the credulous youngster in the very forefront of everything. Until these affidavits came to hand to-day, it would have been far easier to convict him than them.”

“Precisely,” urged Kate. “Credulous is just the word. He was weak, foolish, vain—whatever you like. They led him into the thing. But I don’t believe that at the outset, or, indeed, till very recently, he had any idea of being a party to a plan to plunder us. There are reasons,” the girl blushed a little, and hesitated, “to be frank, there are reasons for my thinking so.”

Reuben, noting the faint flush of embarrassment, catching the doubtful inflection of the words, felt that he comprehended everything, and mirrored that feeling in his glance.

“I quite follow you,” he said. “It is my notion that he was deceived, at the beginning.”

“Others deceived him, and still more he deceived himself,” responded Kate.

“And that is why,” put in Ethel, “we feel like asking you not to take the matter into the courts—I mean so as to put him in prison. It would be too dreadful to think of—to take a man who had dined at your house, and been boating with you, and had driven with you all over the Orange Mountains, picking wild-flowers for you and all that, and put him into prison, where he would have his hair shaved off, and tramp up and down on a treadmill. No; we mustn’t do that, Mr. Tracy.”

Kate added musingly: “He has lost so much, we can afford to be generous, can we not?”

Then Reuben felt that there could be no answer possible except “yes.” His heart pleaded with his brain for a lover’s interpretation of this speech; and his tongue, to evade the issue, framed some halting words about allowing him to go over the whole case to-morrow, and postponing a final decision until that had been done.

The consent of silence was accorded to this, and everybody at the table knew that there would be no prosecutions. Upon the instant the atmosphere grew lighter.

“And now for the real thing,” said Kate, gayly. “I am commissioned on behalf of the entire family to formally thank you for coming to our rescue tonight. Mamma did not hear your speech—she resolutely sat in the library, pretending to read, during the whole rumpus, and we were in such a hurry to get up-stairs that we didn’t tell her when you began—but she couldn’t help hearing the horns, and she is as much obliged to you as we are; and that is very, very, very much indeed!”

“Yes, indeed,” assented Mrs. Minster. “I don’t know where the police were, at all.”

“The police could have done next to nothing, if they had been here,” said Reuben. “The visit of the crowd was annoying enough, and discreditable in its way, but I don’t really imagine there was ever any actual danger. The men felt disagreeable about the closing of the works and the importation of the French Canadians, and I don’t blame them; but as a body they never had any idea of molesting you. My own notion is that the mob was organized by outsiders—by men who had an end to serve in frightening you—and that after the crowd got here it didn’t know what to do with itself. The truth is, that the mob isn’t an American institution. Its component parts are too civilized, too open to appeals to reason. As soon as I told these people the facts in the case, they were quite ready to go, and they even cheered for you before they went.”

“Ethel tells me that you promised them the furnaces should be opened promptly,” said the mother, with her calm, inquiring glance, which might mean sarcasm, anger, approval, or nothing at all.

Reuben answered resolutely: “Yes, Mrs. Minster, I did. And so they must be opened, on Monday. Let us be frank about the matter. It is my dearest wish that I should be able to act for you all in this whole business. But I have gone too far now, the interests involved are too great, to make a pause here possible. The very essence of the situation is that we should defy the trust, and throw upon it the onus of stopping us if it can. We have such a grip upon the men who led you into that trust, and who can influence the decisions of its directors, that they will not dare to show fight. The force of circumstances has made me the custodian of your interests quite as much as of your daughters’. I am very proud and happy that it is so. It is true that I have not your warrant for acting in your behalf; but if you will permit me to say so, that cannot now be allowed to make the slightest difference in my action.”

“Yes, mamma, you are to be rescued in spite of yourself,” said Ethel, merrily.

The young people were all smiling at one another, and to their considerable relief Mrs. Minster concluded to smile also.

Nobody attempted to analyze the mental processes by which she had been brought around. It was enough that she had come to accept the situation. The black shadow of discord, which had overhung the household so long, was gone, and mother and daughters joined in a sigh of grateful relief.

It must have been nearly midnight when Reuben rose finally to go. There had been so much to talk about, and time had flown so softly, buoyantly along, that the evening seemed to him only to have begun, and he felt that he fain would have had it go on forever. These delicious hours that were past had been one sweet sustained conspiracy to do him honor, to minister to his pleasure. No word or smile or deferential glance of attention had been wanting to make complete the homage with which the family had chosen to envelop him. The sense of tender domestic intimacy had surcharged the very air he breathed. It had not even been necessary to keep the ball of talk in motion: so well and truly did they know one another, that silences had come as natural rests—silences more eloquent than spoken words could be of mutual liking and trust. The outside world had shrunk to nothingness. Here within this charmed circle of softened light was home. All that the whole universe contained for him of beauty, of romance, of reverential desire, of happiness, here within touch it was centred. And it was all, all his!

The farewells that found their way into phrases left scarcely a mark upon his memory. There had been cordial, softly significant words of smiling leave-taking with Ethel and her mother, and then, divinely prompted by the spirit which ruled this blessed hour, they had gone away, and he stood alone in the hallway with the woman he worshipped. He held her hand in his, and there was no need for speech.

Slowly, devoutly, he bowed his head over this white hand, and pressed his lips upon it. There were tears in his eyes when he stood erect again, and through them he saw with dim rapture the marvel of an angel’s face, pale, yet glowing in the half light, lovely beyond all mortal dreams; and on this face there shone a smile, tender, languorous, trembling with the supreme ecstasy of a soul.

Were words spoken? Reuben could hardly have told as he walked away down the path to the street. “Bless you! bless you!” was what the song-birds carolled in his brain; but whether the music was an echo of what he had said, did not make itself clear.

He was scarcely conscious of the physical element of walking in his progress. Rather it seemed to him that his whole being was afloat in the ether, wafted forward by the halcyon winds of a beneficent destiny. Was there ever such unthinkable bliss before in all the vast span of the universe?

The snowfall had long since ceased, and the clouds were gone. The air was colder, and the broad sky was brilliant with the clear starlight of winter. To the lover’s eyes, the great planets were nearer, strangely nearer, than they had ever been before, and the undying fire with which they burned was the same that glowed in his own heart. His senses linked themselves to the grand procession of the skies. The triumphant onward glide of the earth itself within this colossal scheme of movement was apparent to him, and seemed but a part of his own resistless, glorified onward sweep. Oh, this—this was life!

At the same hour a heavy and lumpish man made his way homeward by a neighboring street, tramping with difficulty through the hardening snow which lay thick upon the walks. There was nothing buoyant in his stride, and he never once lifted his eyes to observe the luminous panorama spread overhead. With his hands plunged deep into his pockets, and his cane under his arm, he trudged moodily along, his shoulders rounded and his brows bent in a frown.

An acquaintance going in the other direction called out cheerily as he passed, “Hello, General! Pretty tough walking, isn’t it?” and had only an inarticulate grunt for an answer.

There were evil hints abroad in the village below, this night—stories of impending revelations of fraud, hints of coming prosecutions—and General Boyce had heard enough of these to grow sick at heart. That Horace had been deeply mixed up in something scoundrelly, seemed only too evident. Since this foolish, ungrateful boy had left the paternal roof, his father had surrendered himself more than ever to drink; but indulgence now, instead of the old brightening merriment of song and quip and pleasantly reminiscent camp-fire sparkle, seemed to swing him like a pendulum between the extremes of sullen wrath and almost tearful weakness. Something of both these moods weighted his mind to-night, and to their burden was added a crushingly gloomy apprehension that naked disgrace was coming as well. Precisely what it was, he knew not; but winks and nods and unnatural efforts to shift the conversation when he came in had been in the air about him all the evening. The very vagueness of the fear lent it fresh terror.

His own gate was reached at last, and he turned wearily into the path which encircled the small yard to reach the front door. He cursorily noted the existence of some partially obliterated footprints in the snow, and took it for granted that one of the servants had been out late.

He had begun fumbling in his pocket for the key, and had his foot on the lower step, before he discovered in the dim light something which gave even his martial nerves a start. The dark-clad figure of a woman, obviously well dressed, apparently young, lay before him, the head and arms bent under against his very door.

The General was a man of swift decision and ready resource. In an instant he had lifted the figure up out of the snow which half enveloped it, and sustained it in one arm, while with the other he sent the reverberating clamor of the door-bell pealing through the house. Then, unlocking the door, he bore his burden lightly into the hall, turned up the gas, and disposed the inanimate form on a chair.

He did not know the woman, but it was evident that she was very ill—perhaps dying.

When the servant came down, he bade her run with all possible haste for Dr. Lester, who lived only a block or so away.