came over Honora to run away. She excused
herself instead, and hurried back towards her room. On the way she met
Howard in the corridor, and he held a telegram in his hand.

"I've got some bad news, Honora," he said. "That is, bad from the point
of view of our honeymoon. Sid Dallam is swamped with business, and wants
me in New York. I'm afraid we've got to cut it short."

To his astonishment she smiled.

"Oh, I'm so glad, Howard," she cried. "I--I don't like this place nearly
so well as New Orleans. There are--so many people here."

He looked relieved, and patted her on the arm.

"We'll go to-night, old girl," he said.

CHAPTER II

"STAFFORD PARK"

There is a terrifying aspect of all great cities. Rome, with its
leviathan aqueducts, its seething tenements clinging to the hills, its
cruel, shining Palatine, must have overborne the provincial traveller
coming up from Ostia. And Honora, as she stood on the deck of the
ferry-boat, approaching New York for the second time in her life, could
not overcome a sense of oppression. It was on a sharp December morning,
and the steam of the hurrying craft was dazzling white in the early sun.
Above and beyond the city rose, overpowering, a very different city,
somehow, than that her imagination had first drawn. Each of that
multitude of vast towers seemed a fortress now, manned by Celt and Hun
and, Israelite and Saxon, captained by Titans. And the strife between
them was on a scale never known in the world before, a strife with modern
arms and modern methods and modern brains, in which there was no mercy.

Hidden somewhere amidst those bristling miles of masonry to the northward
of the towers was her future home. Her mind dwelt upon it now, for the
first time, and tried to construct it. Once she had spoken to Howard of
it, but he had smiled and avoided discussion. What would it be like to
have a house of one's own in New York? A house on Fifth Avenue, as her
girl friends had said when they laughingly congratulated her and begged
her to remember that they came occasionally to New York. Those of us who,
like Honora, believe in Providence, do not trouble ourselves with mere
matters of dollars and cents. This morning, however, the huge material
towers which she gazed upon seemed stronger than Providence, and she
thought of her husband. Was his fibre sufficiently tough to become
eventually the captain of one of those fortresses, to compete with the
Maitlands and the Wings,