if it don't come slack again."

Sitting all day by that dim window, half the night stitching by a
kerosene lamp; lying for six hours on that narrow couch! How to account
for this old soul's Christian resignation and cheerfulness! "For," said
the doctor, "she has seen better days; she has moved in high society;
her husband, who died twenty years ago, was a policeman. What the
old lady is doing is fighting for her independence. She has only one
fear--the almshouse."

It was with such scenes as these in her eyes that Edith went to her
dressing-room to make her toilet for the Henderson dinner.

V

It was the first time they had dined with the Hendersons. It was Jack's
doings. "Certainly, if you wish it," Edith had said when the invitation
came. The unmentioned fact was that Jack had taken a little flier in
Oshkosh, and a hint from Henderson one evening at the Union, when the
venture looked squally, had let him out of a heavy loss into a small
profit, and Jack felt grateful.

"I wonder how Henderson came to do it?" Jack was querying, as he and old
Fairfax sipped their five-o'clock "Manhattan."

"Oh, Henderson likes to do a good-natured thing still, now and then. Do
you know his wife?"

"No. Who was she?"

"Why, old Eschelle's daughter, Carmen; of course you wouldn't know; that
was ten years ago. There was a good deal of talk about it at the time."

"How?"

"Some said they'd been good friends before Mrs. Henderson's death."

"Then Carmen, as you call her, wasn't the first?"

"No, but she was an easy second. She's a social climber; bound to get
there from the start."

"Is she pretty?"

"Devilish. She's a little thing. I saw her once at Homburg, on the
promenade with her mother.

"The kind of sweet blonde, I said to myself, that would mix a man up in
a duel before he knew where he was."

"She must be interesting."

"She was always clever, and she knows enough to play a straight game and
when to propitiate. I'll bet a five she tells Henderson whom to be good
to when the chance offers."

"Then her influence on him is good?"

"My dear sir, she gets what she wants, and Henderson is going to the...
well, look at the lines in his face. I've known Henderson since he came
fresh into the Street. He'd rarely knife a friend when his first wife
was living. Now, when you see the old frank smile on his face, it's put
on."

It was half-past eight when Mr. Henderson with Mrs. Delancy on his
arm led the way to