d on the door to
steady himself, and stepped forward as Ferrall came up.

"Oh! You're awake, Stephen. Here's a telegram." He extended his hand.
Siward took the yellow envelope, fumbled it, tore it open.

"Good God!" whispered Ferrall; "is it bad?"

And Siward's glazed eyes stared and stared at the scrawled and inky
message:

"YOUR MOTHER IS VERY ILL. COME AT ONCE."

The signature was the name of their family physician, Grisby.

CHAPTER VIII CONFIDENCES

By January the complex social mechanism of the metropolis was whirling
smoothly again; the last ultra-fashionable December lingerer had
returned from the country; those of the same caste outward bound for
a Southern or exotic winter had departed; and the glittering machine,
every part assembled, refurbished, repolished, and connected, having
been given preliminary speed-tests at the horse show, and a tuning up at
the opera, was now running under full velocity; and its steady,
subdued whir quickened the clattering pulse of the city, keying it to a
sublimely syncopated ragtime.

The commercial reaction from the chaos of the holidays had become a
carnival of recovery; shop windows grew brighter and gayer than ever,
bursting into gaudy winter florescence; the main arteries of the town
roared prosperity; cross streets were packed; Fifth Avenue, almost
impassible in the morning, choked up after three o'clock; and all
the afternoon through, and late into the night, mounted police of the
traffic squad, adrift in the tide of carriages, stemmed the flashing
currents pouring north and south from the white marble arch to the
gilded bronze battle-horse and its rider on guard at the portals of the
richest quarter of the wealthiest city in the world.

So far, that winter, snow had fallen only twice, lasting but a day
or two each time; street and avenue remained bone dry where the
white-uniformed cleaning squads worked amid clouds of dust; and all day
long the flinty asphalt echoed the rattling slap of horses' feet; all
day long the big, shining motor-cars sped up town and down town,
droning their distant warnings. It was an open winter in New York, and,
financially, a prosperous one; and that meant a brilliant social season.
Like a set piece of fireworks, with its interdependent parts taking fire
in turn, function after function, spectacle after spectacle, glittered,
fizzed, and was extinguished, only to give place to newer and more
splendid spectacles; separate circles,