Would
not the warriors and the wits, the patient ladies of high degree and of
many children, and even the 'precieuses ridicules' themselves, turn over
in their graves if they could so much as imagine the contents of the
single street in modern New York where Honora lived?

One morning, as she sat in that room, possessed by these whimsical
though painful fancies, she picked up a newspaper and glanced through
it, absently, until her eye fell by chance upon a name on the editorial
page. Something like an electric shock ran through her, and the letters
of the name seemed to quiver and become red. Slowly they spelled--Peter
Erwin.

"The argument of Mr. Peter Erwin, of St. Louis, before the Supreme Court
of the United States in the now celebrated Snowden case is universally
acknowledged by lawyers to have been masterly, and reminiscent of the
great names of the profession in the past. Mr. Erwin is not dramatic. He
appears to carry all before him by the sheer force of intellect, and by
a kind of Lincolnian ability to expose a fallacy: He is still a young
man, self-made, and studied law under Judge Brice of St. Louis, once
President of the National Bar Association, whose partner he is"....

Honora cut out the editorial and thrust it in her gown, and threw
the newspaper is the fire. She stood for a time after it had burned,
watching the twisted remnants fade from flame colour to rose, and
finally blacken. Then she went slowly up the stairs and put on her hat
and coat and veil. Although a cloudless day, it was windy in the park,
and cold, the ruffled waters an intense blue. She walked fast.

She lunched with Mrs. Holt, who had but just come to town; and the
light, like a speeding guest, was departing from the city when she
reached her own door.

"There is a gentleman in the drawing-room, madam," said the butler. "He
said he was an old friend, and a stranger in New York, and asked if he
might wait."

She stood still with presentiment.

"What is his name?" she asked.

"Mr. Erwin," said the man.

Still she hesitated. In the strange state in which she found herself
that day, the supernatural itself had seemed credible. And yet--she was
not prepared.

"I beg pardon, madam," the butler was saying, "perhaps I shouldn't--?"

"Yes, yes, you should," she interrupted him, and pushed past him up
the stairs. At the drawing-room door she paused--he was unaware of her
presence. And he had not changed! She wondered why she had exp