ave, but he resolved to
make it, so into Wall Street he went, and was so successful there, that
at the end of three years he became the junior partner of a great
brokerage house and was entrusted with the furtherance of many delicate
schemes. In society he had won his way to a leadership in not the best,
but the best advertised, set in New York. The plunge into the cold
torrent of Wall Street deception was sufficient to chill even a stronger
optimistic ardor than Duncan's, but when he was carried on into the
whirling, flashing eddies of smart society, only to be left shivering
upon the cruel reefs of selfishness and debauchery, every chivalrous
sentiment was gone, and when he gathered courage for the second plunge,
it was as a designing, selfish disciple of utility.

To return to the dinner. The men had left their coffee and cigars and
the lucky ones had singled out attractive adversaries, with whom to
thrust and parry bright, sharp phrases in those exhilarating
practice-bouts of love, sure to precede the desperate encounters where
mask and buttoned foil are cast aside. Others, to whom fortune was less
kind, were striving to cull from unsympathetic neighbors some evidences
of interest and intelligence, or had resigned themselves to the
melancholy fate of being bored. Duncan wandered restlessly about awhile.
He found no one to interest him, and being too selfish deliberately to
resign himself to another dowager, he remembered that his intended
journey to the West offered a plausible reason for retiring, so, making
his excuses to the hostess, he took his departure, feeling, as he folded
his muffler about his neck and buttoned his great-coat, that for a
successful dinner more depends on the choice of guests than the choice
of wines.

The little blue note found upon his dressing table turned his steps
still farther uptown. The thaw of the afternoon was over; it was
snowing, and cold blasts blew the flakes against his face, biting his
cheeks and chilling his humor, so that when he had trudged the three
squares he had to go, he felt the ill-temper which a raw wind invariably
produces in one whose moods change with the barometer. He approached the
particular flight of brown stone steps he sought, and observing that
the street both ways was free from passers, and that the curtains of the
adjoining houses were drawn, he ascended and rang the bell; a servant
soon opened the door and he entered quickly. The door closed, and,
ins