elf-limited company with a
strong wish to know the ladies. The time comes to every man, no matter
how great a power he may be in society, when the general social opinion
retires him for senility, and this time had come for Bromfield Corey. He
could no longer make or mar any success; and Charles Bellingham was so
notoriously amiable, so deeply compromised by his inveterate habit
of liking nearly every one, that his notice could not distinguish or
advantage a newcomer.

He and Corey took the ladies down to supper. Mrs. Brinkley saw them
there together, and a little later she saw old Corey wander off;
forgetful of Miss Wrayne. She saw Dan Mavering, but not the Pasmers, and
then, when Corey forgot Miss Wrayne, she saw Dan, forlorn and bewildered
looking, approach the girl, and offer her his arm for the return to the
drawing-room; she took it with a bright, cold smile, making white rings
of ironical deprecation around the pupils of her eyes.

"What is that poor boy doing, I wonder?" said Mrs. Brinkley to herself.

XXXVII.

The next morning Dan Mavering knocked at Boardman's door before the
reporter was up. This might have been any time before one o'clock, but
it was really at half-past nine. Boardman wanted to know who was there,
and when Mavering had said it was he, Boardman seemed to ponder the
fact awhile before Mavering heard him getting out of bed and coming
barefooted to the door. He unlocked it, and got back into bed; then he
called out, "Come in," and Mavering pushed the door open impatiently.
But he stood blank and silent, looking helplessly at his friend.
A strong glare of winter light came in through the naked sash--for
Boardman apparently not only did not close his window-blinds, but did
not pull down his curtains, when he went to bed--and shone upon his
gay, shrewd face where he lay, showing his pop-corn teeth in a smile at
Mavering.

"Prefer to stand?" he asked by and by, after Mavering had remained
standing in silence, with no signs of proposing to sit down or speak.
Mavering glanced at the only chair in the room: Boardman's clothes
dripped and dangled over it. "Throw 'em on the bed," he said, following
Mavering's glance.

"I'll take the bed myself," said Mavering; and he sat down on the side
of it, and was again suggestively silent.

Boardman moved his head on the pillow, as he watched Mavering's face,
with the agreeable sense of personal security which we all feel in
viewing trouble from the o