rticulars of the Van
Twiller affair.

It was great entertainment to Our Club, the Van Twiller affair, though
it was rather a joyless thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller. To understand
the case fully, it should be understood that Ralph Van Twiller is one of
the proudest and most sensitive men living. He is a lineal descendant
of Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch governor of New York--Nieuw
Amsterdam, as it was then; his ancestors have always been burgomasters
or admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer
Van-zandt Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be pointed out to
you on the right bank of the Hudson, as you pass up the historic river
towards Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old. Birth made him
a gentleman, and the rise of real estate--some of it in the family since
the old governor's time--made him a millionaire. It was a kindly fairy
that stepped in and made him a good fellow also. Fortune, I take it, was
in her most jocund mood when she heaped her gifts in this fashion on
Van Twiller, who was, and will be again, when this cloud blows over, the
flower of Our Club.

About a year ago there came a whisper--if the word "whisper" is not
too harsh a term to apply to what seemed a mere breath floating gently
through the atmosphere of the billiard-room--imparting the intelligence
that Van Twiller was in some kind of trouble. Just as everybody suddenly
takes to wearing square-toed boots, or to drawing his neckscarf through
a ring, so it became all at once the fashion, without any preconcerted
agreement, for everybody to speak of Van Twilier as a man in some way
under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and how he got under it, and why
he did not get away from it, were points that lifted themselves into
the realm of pure conjecture. There was no man in the club with strong
enough wing to his imagination to soar to the supposition that Van
Twiller was embarrassed in money matters. Was he in love? That appeared
nearly as improbable; for if he had been in love all the world--that
is, perhaps a hundred first families--would have known all about it
instantly.

"He has the symptoms," said Delaney, laughing. "I remember once when
Jack Hemming "--

"Ned!" cried Hemming, "I protest against any allusion to that business."

This was one night when Van Twiller had wandered into the club, turned
over the magazines absently in the reading-room, and wandered out again
without speaking ten words. The m