glance into the hallway, where he
had thought he saw the flash of brazen buttons, bowed low and
handsomely. Among all the millionaire male friends of Mrs. Vanderlyn
was not one who was half capable of such a bow, and, in a dim way she
appreciated this. She did not for a moment, though, think it marked
the aged man before her as a gentleman, and worthy, therefore, of
consideration from a lady. She was trying to feel certain, now, that
what she had believed an evidence of really high breeding, was,
really, mere clever sham. The old musician had lost all the glamor of
his mystery for her. Surely, had he really been what she suspected,
then his daughter would have been incapable of the offense which she,
its victim, had come there to punish. Now the old man's courtly grace
upon the ship, by which she had been fooled into believing him a
person of real eminence, was openly revealed to her as counterfeit and
worthless--he was a swindler, almost, indeed, as viciously dishonest
as the thing his daughter had been guilty of. Now his manner merely
sent a vague reflection through her brain that upon the ocean's other
side their peasants were well trained. Now she was bitterly resentful
of the fact that, on the ship, she had been fooled into thinking him a
person, possibly, of eminence.

"So," said Kreutzer, offering her, with graceful courtesy which made
her falter in her new conviction, and a perfect ease, withal, which
much astonished her, the best chair in the room. "And you, Madame, are
Mrs. Vanderlyn?"

"Yes," Mrs. Vanderlyn replied. "I'm Mrs. Vanderlyn. Your daughter,
till to-day, was--my companion."

"Ah, Madame; I know," said the old man. "You wish to see her? Is that
the reason why you honor my so humble home, Madame?"

Mrs. Vanderlyn, who had come to bluster, was a bit nonplussed, even a
bit abashed by the superb and easy manner of the man. Never in her
life had she been privileged, indeed, to meet with a reception so
graceful and so courteous. Could she, after all, be wrong? Here, at
last, in an apartment on the top floor of a New York tenement, had she
encountered what she had vainly searched for, elsewhere, even on her
travels in the European countries. This was the grace and courtesy
which she had read about. She really was much impressed, and, in her
heart, would have been pleased if she had had an errand there less
disagreeable. She wondered why she had not remembered with more
accuracy, the superb demeanor of