They had crossed Broadway and were entering Fifth Avenue. There the
stream of carriages kept them a moment on the curb.

"I hope," Tristrem began again, "I hope you are not vexed."

"Vexed at what? No, I am not vexed. I am tired; every other man I
meet--There, we can cross now. Besides, I am married. Don't get run
over. I am going in that shop."

"You are _not_ married!"

"Yes, I am; if I were a Harvard graduate I would say to Euterpe. As it
is, Scales is more definite." She had led him to the door of a milliner,
a portal which Tristrem knew was closed to him. "If you care to come and
see me," she added, by way of _conge_, "my husband will probably be at
home." And with that she opened the door and passed into the shop.

"I can imagine a husband," thought Tristrem, with a glimmer of that
spirit of belated repartee which Thackeray called cab-wit, the
brilliancy which comes to us when we are going home, "I can imagine a
husband whose greatest merit is his wife."

IV.

The fact that few days elapsed before Tristrem Varick availed himself of
Miss Raritan's invitation, and that thereafter he continued to avail
himself of it with frequence and constancy, should surprise no one.
During the earliest of these visits he met Miss Raritan's mother, and
was unaccountably annoyed when he heard that lady address her daughter
as Viola. He had been so sure that her baptismal name was Madeleine that
the one by which he found she was called sounded false as an alias, and
continued so to sound until he accustomed himself to the syllables and
ended by preferring it to the Madeleine of his fancy. This, however, by
the way. Mrs. Raritan was a woman who, in her youth, must have been very
beautiful, and traces of that beauty she still preserved. When she spoke
her voice endeared her to you, and in her manner there was that
something which made you feel that she might be calumniated, as good
women often are, but yet that she could never be the subject of gossip.
She did not seem resolute, but she did seem warm of heart, and Tristrem
felt at ease with her at once.

Of her he saw at first but little. In a city like New York it is
difficult for anyone to become suddenly intimate in a household, however
cordial and well-intentioned that household may be. And during those
hours of the winter days when Miss Raritan was at home it was seldom
that her mother was visible. But it was not long before Tristrem became
an occasional guest