ng to three hundred weak. Then I bowed and withdrew,
leaving them to mutter and disperse. I felt well content with the
trend of events--I who wished to impress the public and the financiers
that I had broken with speculation and speculators, could I have had a
better than this unexpected opportunity sharply to define my new
course? And as Textiles, unsupported, fell toward the close of the
day, my content rose toward my normal high spirits. There was no
whisper in the Street that I was in trouble; on the contrary, the idea
was gaining ground that I had really long ceased to be a stock gambler
and deserved a much better reputation than I had. Reputation is a
matter of diplomacy rather than of desert. In all my career I was
never less entitled to a good reputation than in those June days; yet
the disastrous gambling follies, yes, and worse, I then committed,
formed the secure foundation of my reputation for conservatism and
square dealing. From that time dates the decline of the habit the
newspapers had of speaking of me as "Black Matt" or "Matt" Blacklock.
In them, and therefore in the public mind, I began to figure as "Mr.
Blacklock" and "the well-known authority on finance."

No doubt, my marriage had something to do with this. Probably one
couldn't borrow much money directly in New York on the strength of a
fashionable marriage; but, so all-pervading is the snobbishness there,
one can get, by making a fashionable marriage, any quantity of that
deferential respect from rich people which is, in some circumstances,
easily convertible into cash and credit.

I waited with a good deal of anxiety, as you may imagine, for the
early editions of the afternoon papers. The first article my eye
chanced upon was a mere wordy elaboration of the brief and vague
announcement Monson had put in the _Herald_. Later came an interview
with old Ellersly. "Not at all mysterious," he had said to the
reporters. "Mr. Blacklock found he would have to go abroad on business
soon--he didn't know just when. On the spur of the moment they decided
to marry." A good enough story, and I confirmed it when I admitted the
reporters. I read their estimates of my fortune and of Anita's with
rather bitter amusement--she whose father was living from hand to
mouth; I who could not have emerged from a forced settlement with
enough to enable me to keep a trap. Still, when one is rich, the
reputation of being rich is heavily expensive; but when one is poor
the r