w that she and Archie saw much of
each other, were very good friends, indeed, but the intimacy did not
disturb her. She no longer had that passionate jealousy of Archie's
every movement which had rendered the first years of their marriage so
irksome to Archie. It is doubtful if she would have resented his
intimacy with any woman, but his "affair" with Irene Pointer merely
amused her. Archie was no longer her most precious possession....

The winter after their return to California a new specter appeared--the
last that Adelle expected to encounter in her life. Archie hinted that
it would be well to go slow with their "improvements" at Highcourt. The
times were getting bad, he said, and the market looked as if they would
get worse rather than better. Every one was talking of a dark future,
unsettled conditions industrially in the country, and "tightening
money," whatever that might mean. Adelle could not see why it should
affect her solid fortune based upon Clark's Field. To be sure, men
talked business more than usually, the ill treatment that capital was
receiving, the "social unrest," and such matters, which did not interest
her. She thought that Archie had caught the trick of complaining about
business and cursing social conditions in America from the men at his
clubs, most of whom were obliged to earn their living by business. If
the worst came, if America became impossible, as Nelson Carhart was
always predicting, for "decent people to endure," they could go abroad
until things straightened out again.

Then in midwinter came the Seaboard smash. As a matter of fact, that
crazy enterprise had been tottering upon the brink of failure from its
inception, and Archie was merely one of the stool pigeons on whom the
shrewd promoters had unloaded their "underwriting" in approved style. He
came back from San Francisco one night very glum and announced
peremptorily that they must cut down their expenses and "quit all this
fool building." He wanted to sell the ranch, but it could not be sold in
these depressed times when rich men were hoarding their pennies like
paupers. And there began at Highcourt a regime of retrenchment, bitterly
fought by Adelle--the rich man's poverty where there is no actual want,
but a series of petty curtailments and borrowings and sometimes a real
shortness of cash, almost as squalid as the commoner sort of poverty.
Adelle could not understand the reason for this sudden change, and
refused absolutely