s career.

Never in her life did Diane receive in the same amount of time so much
personal information as Mrs. Wappinger conveyed in the thirty minutes
her visit lasted. She began by explaining that she was a friend of James
van Tromp's--a very great friend. In fact, her husband had been at one
time a partner in the Van Tromp banking-house; but it was an old
business, and what they call conservative, while Mr. Wappinger was from
the West. The West was a long way ahead of New York, though Mrs.
Wappinger had "lived East" so long that she had dropped into walking
pace like the rest. She traced her rise from a comparatively obscure
position in Indiana to her present eminence, and gave details as to Mr.
Wappinger's courtship and the number of children she had lost. Left now
with one, she had spent a good deal of money on him, and was happy to
say that he showed it. While she preferred not to name names, she made
no secret of the fact that Carli was in love; though for her own part a
feeling of wounded pride induced her to hope that he would never enter a
family where he wasn't wanted. The transition of topic having thus
become easy, the invitation to tea was given, and its acceptance taken
as a matter of course.

"It'll only be a _tay antime_," she declared, in answer to Diane's faint
protests, "so you needn't be afraid to come; and as I never do things by
halves, I shall send one of my automobiles for the old lady and you at a
little after four to-morrow." With these words and a hearty shake of the
hand, she bustled away as suddenly as she had come, leaving Diane with a
bewildering sense of having beheld an apparition.

* * * * *

It was not less surprising to Diane to find herself, on the following
afternoon, face to face with Derek Pruyn. Though she had expected, in so
far as she thought of him at all, that chance would one day throw them
together, she had not supposed that the event would occur so soon. The
lack of preparation, the change in her fortunes, and the necessity to
explain, combined to bring about one of those rare moments in which she
found herself at a loss.

On his side, Pruyn had come to the house with a very special purpose. In
spite of the stoutness of his protest when young Wappinger's name was
coupled with his child's, he was not without some inward misgivings,
which he resolved to allay once and for all. He would dispel them by
seeing with his own eyes that they had