rk was a small and early family party and M. P. led the ball, and at a
pace so klinking that he danced beyond the favours of the cotillon--the
german as it, the cotillon, was then lovingly called--into assemblies,
certainly less select, but certainly, too, more gay, and had horrified
scrumptious sedateness with the uproar of his orgies.

The indicated obituaries followed. "Well, at any rate, they didn't
murder him for it." "The son now, a chip of the old block, eh?" "Nothing
of the kind, a quiet young prig." "The papers say----" "Damn the papers,
they never know anything." "You mean they don't print what they do
know." "I mean they don't give us the woman. For it was a woman. I'll
eat my hat it was a woman." "Let's have lunch instead."

Generally, for the moment, that was the verdict, one in which the police
had already collaborated. But what woman? And, assuming the woman,
whence had she come? Where had she gone?--problems, momentarily
insoluble but which investigations, then in progress, would probably
decide.

At the great white house on upper Fifth Avenue, the servants knew only
that they knew nothing. Nothing at all. Already coached, they were sure
and unshakable in their knowledge of that. A Mr. Harvey--from
Headquarters--could not budge them an inch. Not one!

The night before, at the first intelligence of it, M. P. came nearer to
giving up the ghost than is commonly advisable. Suffocation seized him.
An incubus within was pushing his life-springs out. So can emotion and
an impaired digestion affect a father. The emotion was not caused by
grief. It was fear. For weeks, for months, during the tedium and terror
of the trial, his name, Paliser, would top the page! It had topped it
before, very often, but that was years ago. Then he had not cared. Then
the wine of youth still bubbled. No, he had not cared. But that was long
ago. Since then the wine of youth had gone, spilled in those orgies
which he had survived, yet, in the survival, abandoned more and more to
solitude and making him seek, what the solitary ever do seek,
inconspicuousness. For years he had courted obscurity as imbeciles court
fame. And now!

If only the boy had had the decency to die of pneumonia!

It was then the incubus gripped him. For a second he saw the visage,
infinitely consoling, that Death can display and possibly, but for an
immediate drug, there too would have echoed the _Terra addio_!

He was then in white velvet. A preparation of