whose presence would have
reminded her of her foolish rudeness to him, and of the bitter failure of
her schemes for her daughter. "Wait, wait," said the good counselor,
"until the turmoil has subsided, and the hard pressure of circumstances
compels her to look at things in their natural relations. She is too
sore now in--the wreck of all her hopes."

But, indeed, her hopes were not all surrendered in a moment. She had
more spirit than her husband in their calamity. She was, in fact, a born
gambler; she had the qualities of her temperament, and would not believe
that courage and luck could not retrieve, at least partially, their
fortune. It seemed incredible in the Street that the widow of Henderson
should have given over her property so completely to her second husband,
and it was a surprise to find that there was very little of value that
the assignment of Mavick did not carry with it. The Street did not know
the guilty secret between Mavick and his wife that made them cowards to
each other. Nor did it understand that Carmen was the more venturesome
gambler of the two, and that gradually, for the success of promising
schemes, she had thrown one thing after another into the common
speculation, until practically all the property stood in Mavick's name.
Was she a fool in this, as so many women are about their separate
property, or was she cheated?

The palace on Fifth Avenue was not even in her name. When she realized
that, there was a scene--but this is not a history of the quarrels of
Carmen and her husband after the break-down.

The reader would not be interested--the public of the time were not--in
the adjustment of Mavick and his wife to their new conditions.
The broken-down, defeated bankrupt is no novelty in Wall Street, the man
struggling to keep his foothold in the business of the Street, and
descending lower and lower in the scale. The shrewd curbstone broker may
climb to a seat in the Stock Exchange; quite as often a lord of the
Board, a commander of millions, may be reduced to the seedy watcher of
the bulletin-board in a bucket-shop.

At first, in the excitement and the confusion, amid the debris of so much
possible wealth, Mavick kept a sort of position, and did not immediately
feel the pinch of vulgar poverty. But the day came when all illusion
vanished, and it was a question of providing from day to day for the
small requirements of the house in Irving Place.

It was not a cheerful household; reproach