and luckily she seems always to have been
blind to his private weaknesses."

There was a knock, and Mr. Letterblair turned his head sharply. "What
is it? I can't be disturbed."

A clerk brought in a letter for Archer and withdrew. Recognising his
wife's hand, the young man opened the envelope and read: "Won't you
please come up town as early as you can? Granny had a slight stroke
last night. In some mysterious way she found out before any one else
this awful news about the bank. Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and the
idea of the disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a
temperature and can't leave his room. Mamma needs you dreadfully, and
I do hope you can get away at once and go straight to Granny's."

Archer handed the note to his senior partner, and a few minutes later
was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car, which he exchanged at
Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth
Avenue line. It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious vehicle
dropped him at old Catherine's. The sitting-room window on the ground
floor, where she usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure
of her daughter, Mrs. Welland, who signed a haggard welcome as she
caught sight of Archer; and at the door he was met by May. The hall
wore the unnatural appearance peculiar to well-kept houses suddenly
invaded by illness: wraps and furs lay in heaps on the chairs, a
doctor's bag and overcoat were on the table, and beside them letters
and cards had already piled up unheeded.

May looked pale but smiling: Dr. Bencomb, who had just come for the
second time, took a more hopeful view, and Mrs. Mingott's dauntless
determination to live and get well was already having an effect on her
family. May led Archer into the old lady's sitting-room, where the
sliding doors opening into the bedroom had been drawn shut, and the
heavy yellow damask portieres dropped over them; and here Mrs. Welland
communicated to him in horrified undertones the details of the
catastrophe. It appeared that the evening before something dreadful
and mysterious had happened. At about eight o'clock, just after Mrs.
Mingott had finished the game of solitaire that she always played after
dinner, the door-bell had rung, and a lady so thickly veiled that the
servants did not immediately recognise her had asked to be received.

The butler, hearing a familiar voice, had thrown open the sitting-room
door, announcing: "Mr