ld lady, accounted for his ability to keep out
of debt and pay for his many extravagances; but Ruyler knew that he was
principally esteemed at the small green table, and he vaguely recalled as
he looked over his head to-night that he had heard disconnected murmurs
of less honorable sources of revenue.

As Ruyler turned away with a frown he met Gwynne's eyes traveling from
the same direction. "I didn't ask him," he said apologetically. "Hate men
too well dressed. Looks as if he posed for tailors' ads in the weeklies.
Never could stand the social parasite anyhow, but Aileen Lawton asked
Isabel to let her bring him, as they are going to open the ball to-night
with some new kind of turkey trot.

"Glad I'm off for Washington. California's the greatest place on earth in
the dry season, but I'd have passed few winters here if it hadn't been
for the work we all had to do, and even then it would have been heavy
going without my wife's companionship."

Ruyler sighed. Should he ever enjoy his wife's companionship? And into
what sort of woman would she develop if forced along crooked ways by ugly
secrets, blackmail, perpetual lying and deceit? He longed impatiently for
the decisive interview with Spaulding on the morrow. Then, at least he
could prepare for action, and, after all, even of more importance now
than winning his wife's confidence and saving her from mental anguish,
was the averting of a scandal that would echo across the continent
straight into the ears of his half-reconciled father.

IV

It was about halfway through dinner that the primitive man in him routed
every variety of apprehension that had tormented him since two o'clock
that afternoon.

Trennahan, another distinguished New Yorker, who had made his home in
California for many years, had taken in Mrs. Gwynne, and his Spanish
California wife sat at the foot of the table with the host. Ford had
been given a lively girl, Aileen Lawton, to dissipate the financial
anxieties of the day, and, to Ruyler's satisfaction, Mrs. Thornton had
fallen to his lot and he sat on the left of Isabel. In this little group
at the head of the table, his chosen intimates, who were more interested
in the affairs of the world than in Consummate California, Ruyler had
forgotten his wife for a time and had not noticed with whom she had gone
in to dinner.

But during an interval when Mrs. Thornton's attention had been captured
by the man on her right, and the others drawn into a di