en that row of
small and evil cottages where French women, painted, scantily dressed
in a travesty of the evening gown, called to the passer-by through the
slats of old-fashioned green shutters. That had been before Ruyler's
day, but he knew the history of the neighborhood, and this man's
interest in it. He was not surprised to hear Bisbee laugh aloud as
Madame Delano, who stepped off the car with astonishing agility,
waddled down the now respectable street. But she held her head
majestically and did not look back.

Ruyler squared his back lest the man, glancing over, recognize him. That
would be more than he could bear. As the car reached Front Street he
sprang from the dummy and walked rapidly north to Ruyler and Sons. He
locked himself in his private office, dismissing his stenographer with
the excuse that he had important business to think out and must not be
disturbed.

II

But business was forgotten. He was as nearly in a state of panic as was
possible for a man of his inheritance and ordered life. He belonged to
that class of New Yorker that looked with cold disgust upon the women of
commerce. So far as he knew he had never exchanged a word with one of
them, and had often listened with impatience to the reminiscences of his
San Francisco friends, now married and at least intermittently decent, of
the famous ladies who once had reigned in the gay night life of San
Francisco.

And his mother-in-law! The mother of his wife!

Her name was Marie. In that chaos of flesh an interested eye might
discover the ruins of beauty. Her hair, he knew, had been black. He
recalled the terror expressed in every line of that mountainous
figure--which may well have been perfect twenty years ago. The green
pallor of her cheek! And he had long felt, rather than knew, that she
possessed magnificent powers of bluff. Her dignified exit had been no
more convincing to him than to Bisbee.

He went back over the past and recalled all he knew of the woman whose
daughter he had married. She had visited the United States about
twenty-one years ago, met and married Delano, and remained in San
Francisco two or three months on their way to Japan. Delano had died on
the voyage across the Pacific, been buried at sea, and his widow had
returned to her family in Rouen and settled down in her brother's
household.

This was practically all he knew, for it was all that Helene knew, and
Madame Delano never wasted words. It had not occurred to h