our heart on it, so I wired an offer to Shorter to-day, and he accepted
it. And when I hand you this pleasant little surprise, you go right up in
the air."

He had no air of vexation, however, as he delivered this somewhat
reproachful harangue in the picturesque language to which he commonly
resorted. Quite the contrary. He was still smiling, as Santa Claus must
smile when he knows he has another pack up the chimney.

"Why this sudden change of mind?" he demanded. "It can't be because you
want to spend the winter in Quicksands."

She was indeed at a loss what to say. She could not bring herself to ask
him whether he had been influenced by Trixton Brent. If he had, she told
herself, she did not wish to know. He was her husband, after all, and it
would be too humiliating. And then he had taken the house.

"Have you hit on a palace you like better?" he inquired, with a clumsy
attempt at banter. "They tell me the elder Maitlands are going abroad
--perhaps we could get their house on the Park."

"You said you couldn't afford Mrs. Rindge's house," she answered
uneasily, "and I--I believed you."

"I couldn't," he said mysteriously, and paused.

It seemed to her, as she recalled the scene afterwards, that in this
pause he gave the impression of physically swelling. She remembered
staring at him with wide, frightened eyes and parted lips.

"I couldn't," he repeated, with the same strange emphasis and a palpable
attempt at complacency. "But--er--circumstances have changed since then."

"What do you mean, Howard?" she whispered.

The corners of his mouth twitched in the attempt to repress a smile.

"I mean," he said, "that the president of a trust company can afford to
live in a better house than the junior partner of Dallam and Spence."

"The president of a trust company!" Honora scarcely recognized her own
voice--so distant it sounded. The room rocked, and she clutched the arm
of a chair and sat down. He came and stood over her.

"I thought that would surprise you some," he said, obviously pleased by
these symptoms. "The fact is, I hadn't meant to break it to you until
morning. But I think I'll go in on the seven thirty-five." (He glanced
significantly up at the ceiling, as though Mrs. Holt had something to do
with this decision.) "President of the Orange Trust Company at forty
isn't so bad, eh?"

"The Orange Trust Company? Did you say the Orange Trust Company?"

"Yes." He produced a cigarette. "Old James Wing an