children could almost come to
forget him in five years. She put her other hand to her mouth, also, and
then to her forehead, where there was a dull ache. She tried to think
further than this, but somehow, just now, there was no further thought.
Suddenly quite outside of her own volition, with no thought that she
was going to do such a thing, her bosom began to heave, her throat
contracted in four or five short, sharp, aching spasms, her eyes burned,
and she shook in a vigorous, anguished, desperate, almost one might have
said dry-eyed, cry, so hot and few were the tears. She could not stop
for the moment, just stood there and shook, and then after a while a
dull ache succeeded, and she was quite as she had been before.

"Why cry?" she suddenly asked herself, fiercely--for her. "Why break
down in this stormy, useless way? Would it help?"

But, in spite of her speculative, philosophic observations to herself,
she still felt the echo, the distant rumble, as it were, of the storm in
her own soul. "Why cry? Why not cry?" She might have said--but wouldn't,
and in spite of herself and all her logic, she knew that this tempest
which had so recently raged over her was now merely circling around her
soul's horizon and would return to break again.

Chapter L

The arrival of Steger with the information that no move of any kind
would be made by the sheriff until Monday morning, when Cowperwood could
present himself, eased matters. This gave him time to think--to adjust
home details at his leisure. He broke the news to his father and mother
in a consoling way and talked with his brothers and father about getting
matters immediately adjusted in connection with the smaller houses to
which they were now shortly to be compelled to move. There was much
conferring among the different members of this collapsing organization
in regard to the minor details; and what with his conferences with
Steger, his seeing personally Davison, Leigh, Avery Stone, of Jay Cooke
& Co., George Waterman (his old-time employer Henry was dead),
ex-State Treasurer Van Nostrand, who had gone out with the last State
administration, and others, he was very busy. Now that he was really
going into prison, he wanted his financial friends to get together and
see if they could get him out by appealing to the Governor. The division
of opinion among the judges of the State Supreme Court was his excuse
and strong point. He wanted Steger to follow this up, and h