in town, he thought of the overworn journalist groaning with
neuralgia, and wondered how Mrs. Abbott would relish a removal to the
town of Waterbury.

CHAPTER 4

Uncertain to the last moment, Harvey did at length hurry into his dress
clothes, and start for Fitzjohn Avenue. He had little mind for the
semi-fashionable crowd and the amateur music, but he could not answer
Mrs. Bennet Frothingham with any valid excuse, and, after all, she
meant kindly towards him. Why he enjoyed so much of this lady's favour
it was not easy to understand; intellectual sympathy there could be
none between them, and as for personal liking, on his side it did not
go beyond that naturally excited by a good-natured, feather-brained,
rather pretty woman, whose sprightliness never passed the limits of
decorum, and who seemed to have better qualities than found scope in
her butterfly existence. Perhaps he amused her, being so unlike the
kind of man she was accustomed to see. His acquaintance with the family
dated from their social palingenesis, when, after obscure prosperity in
a southern suburb, they fluttered to the northern heights, and were
observed of the paragraphists. Long before that, Bennet Frothingham had
been known in the money-market; it was the 'Britannia'--Loan,
Assurance, Investment, and Banking Company, Limited--that made him
nationally prominent, and gave an opportunity to his wife (in second
marriage) and his daughter (by the first). Three years ago, when
Carnaby (already lured by the charms of Sibyl Larkfield) presented his
friend Rolfe as 'the man who had been to Bagdad', Alma Frothingham, not
quite twenty-one, was studying at the Royal Academy of Music, and,
according to her friends, promised to excel alike on the piano and the
violin, having at the same time a 'really remarkable' contralto voice.
Of late the young lady had abandoned singing, rarely used the
pianoforte, and seemed satisfied to achieve distinction as a violinist.
She had founded an Amateur Quartet Society, whose performances were
frequently to be heard at the house in Fitzjohn Avenue.

Last winter Harvey had chanced to meet Alma and her stepmother at
Leipzig, at a Gewandhaus concert. He was invited to go with them to
hear the boys' motet at the Thomaskirche; and with this intercourse
began the change in their relations from mere acquaintance to something
like friendship. Through the following spring Rolfe was a familiar
figure at the Frothinghams'; bu