She could have sworn that he had visibly swollen on the evening when he
had announced to her his promotion, and he seemed to have remained
swollen. Not bloated, of course: he was fatter, and--if possible pinker.
But there was a growing suggestion in him of humming-and-hawing
greatness. If there--were leisure in this too-leisurely chronicle for
what might be called aftermath, the dinner that Honora had given to some
of her Quicksands friends might be described. Suffice it to recall, with
Honora, that Lily Dallam, with a sure instinct, had put the finger of her
wit on this new attribute of Howard's.

"You'll kill me, Howard!" she had cried. "He even looks at the soup as
though he were examining a security!"

Needless to say, it did not cure him, although it sealed Lily Dallam's
fate--and incidentally that of Quicksands. Honora's thoughts as she sat
now at the piano watching him, flew back unexpectedly to the summer at
Silverdale when she had met him, and she tried to imagine, the genial and
boyish representative of finance that he was then. In the midst of this
effort he looked up and discovered her.

"What are you doing over there, Honora?" he asked.

"Thinking," she answered.

"That's a great way to treat a man when he comes home after a day's
work."

"I beg your pardon, Howard," she said with unusual meekness. "Who do you
think was here this afternoon?"

"Erwin? I've just come from Mr. Wing's house--he has gout to-day and
didn't go down town. He offered Erwin a hundred thousand a year to come
to New York as corporation counsel. And if you'll believe me--he refused
it."

"I'll believe you," she said.

"Did he say anything about it to you?"

"He simply mentioned that Mr. Wing asked him to come to New York. He
didn't say why."

"Well," Howard remarked, "he's one too many for me. He can't be making
over thirty thousand where he is."

CHAPTER II

THE PATH OF PHILANTHROPY

Mrs. Cecil Grainger may safely have been called a Personality, and one of
the proofs of this was that she haunted people who had never seen her.
Honora might have looked at her, it is true, on the memorable night of
the dinner with Mrs. Holt and Trixton Brent; but--for sufficiently
obvious reasons--refrained. It would be an exaggeration to say that Mrs.
Grainger became an obsession with our heroine; yet it cannot be denied
that, since Honora's arrival at Quicksands, this lady had, in increasing
degrees, been the subject of her spec