They had a good bit of money in
the bank. Their investments in stocks, on which they obtained a uniform
rate of interest of about seven per cent., aggregated $30,000. They had
two lots, two hundred by two hundred, in Montclair, which were said to
be slowly increasing in value and which Eugene now estimated to be worth
about six thousand. He was talking about investing what additional money
he might save in stocks bearing better interest or some sound commercial
venture. When the proper time came, a little later, he might even
abandon the publishing field entirely and renew his interest in art. He
was certainly getting near the possibility of this.

The place which they selected for their residence in New York was in a
new and very sumptuous studio apartment building on Riverside Drive near
Seventy-ninth Street, where Eugene had long fancied he would like to
live. This famous thoroughfare and show place with its restricted park
atmosphere, its magnificent and commanding view of the lordly Hudson,
its wondrous woods of color and magnificent sunsets had long taken his
eye. When he had first come to New York it had been his delight to
stroll here watching the stream of fashionable equipages pour out
towards Grant's Tomb and return. He had sat on a park bench many an
afternoon at this very spot or farther up, and watched the gay company
of horsemen and horsewomen riding cheerfully by, nodding to their social
acquaintances, speaking to the park keepers and road scavengers in a
condescending and superior way, taking their leisure in a comfortable
fashion and looking idly at the river. It seemed a wonderful world to
him at that time. Only millionaires could afford to live there, he
thought--so ignorant was he of the financial tricks of the world. These
handsomely garbed men in riding coats and breeches; the chic looking
girls in stiff black hats, trailing black riding skirts, yellow gloved,
and sporting short whips which looked more like dainty canes than
anything else, took his fancy greatly. It was his idea at that time that
this was almost the apex of social glory--to be permitted to ride here
of an afternoon.

Since then he had come a long way and learned a great deal, but he still
fancied this street as one of the few perfect expressions of the
elegance and luxury of metropolitan life, and he wanted to live on it.
Angela was given authority, after discussion, to see what she could find
in the way of an apartment of say n