nly announced themselves,
in fine, to our general consternation, as Eliza's: but it was at this
unnatural vision that my heart indeed leaped up. I was beforehand even
with Lorraine; she was still gaping while, in three bold strokes, I
sketched to her our campaign. "I take command--the others are flat on
their backs. I save little pathetic Peg, even in spite of herself;
though her just resentment is really much greater than she dares, poor
mite, recognize (amazing scruple!). By which I mean I guard her against
a possible relapse. I save poor Mother--that is I rid her of the
deadly Eliza--forever and a day! Despised, rejected, misunderstood, I
nevertheless intervene, in its hour of dire need, as the good genius of
the family; and you, dear little quaint thing, I take advantage of the
precious psychological moment to whisk YOU off to Europe. We'll take
Peg with us for a year's true culture; she wants a year's true culture
pretty badly, but she doesn't, as it turns out, want Mr. Goward a
'speck.' And I'll do it all in my own way, before they can recover
breath; they'll recover it--if we but give them time--to bless our name;
but by that moment we shall have struck for freedom!"

Well, then, my own way--it was "given me," as Lorraine says--was,
taking the night express, without a word to any one but Peg, whom it was
charming, at the supreme hour, to feel glimmeringly, all-wonderingly,
with us: my own way, I say, was to go, the next morning, as soon as I
had breakfasted, to the address Lorraine had been able, by an
immense piece of luck, to suggest to me as a possible clue to Eliza's
whereabouts. "She'll either be with her friends the Chataways, in East
Seventy-third Street--she's always swaggering about the Chataways, who
by her account are tremendous 'smarts,' as she has told Lorraine the
right term is in London, leading a life that is a burden to them without
her; or else they'll know where she is. That's at least what I HOPE!"
said my wife with infinite feminine subtlety. The Chataways as a subject
of swagger presented themselves, even to my rustic vision, oddly; I may
be mistaken about New York "values," but the grandeur of this connection
was brought home to me neither by the high lopsided stoop of its very,
very East Side setting, nor by the appearance of a terrible massive lady
who came to the door while I was in quite unproductive parley with an
unmistakably, a hopelessly mystified menial, an outlandish young woman
w