Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be
pointed out to you on the right bank of the Hudson as you pass up the
historic river toward Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old.
Birth made him a gentleman, and the rise of real estate--some of it in
the family since the old governor's time--made him a millionaire. It
was a kindly fairy that stepped in and made him a good fellow also.
Fortune, I take it, was in her most jocund mood when she heaped her
gifts in this fashion on Van Twiller, who was, and will be again, when
this cloud blows over, the flower of Our Club.

About a year ago there came a whisper--if the word "whisper" is not too
harsh a term to apply to what seemed a mere breath floating gently
through the atmosphere of the billiard-room--imparting the intelligence
that Van Twiller was in some kind of trouble. Just as everybody
suddenly takes to wearing square-toed boots, or to drawing his
neckscarf through a ring, so it became all at once the fashion, without
any preconcerted agreement, for everybody to speak of Van Twiller as a
man in some way under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and how he got
under it, and why he did not get away from it, were points that lifted
themselves into the realm of pure conjecture. There was no man in the
club with strong enough wing to his imagination to soar to the
supposition that Van Twiller was embarrassed in money matters. Was he
in love? That appeared nearly as improbable; for if he had been in love
all the world--that is, perhaps a hundred first families--would have
known all about it instantly.

"He has the symptoms," said Delaney, laughing. "I remember once when
Jack Fleming--"

"Ned!" cried Flemming, "I protest against any allusion to that
business."

This was one night when Van Twiller had wandered into the club, turned
over the magazines absently in the reading-room, and wandered out again
without speaking ten words. The most careless eye would have remarked
the great change that had come over Van Twiller. Now and then he would
play a game of billiards with De Peyster or Haseltine, or stop to chat
a moment in the vestibule with old Duane; but he was an altered man.
When at the club, he was usually to be found in the small smoking-room
upstairs, seated on a fauteuil fast asleep, with the last number of
"The Nation" in his hand. Once, if you went to two or three places of
an evening, you were certain to meet Van Twiller at them all. You