f a man who has got
into the wrong house.

"I very much fear I've intruded, Mrs. Spence," he stammered, and he was
winking now with bewildering rapidity. "We--we had such a pleasant drive
together that day to Westchester--I was tempted--"

"We did have a good time," she agreed. "And it has been a pleasure to see
you again."

Thus, in the kindness of her heart, she assisted him to cover his
retreat, for it was a strange and somewhat awful experience to see Mr.
Cecil Grainger discountenanced. He glanced again, as he went out, at the
chair in which he had been forbidden to sit.

She went to the piano, played over a few bars of Thais, and dropped her
hands listlessly. Cross currents of the strange events of the day flowed
through her mind: Peter's arrival and its odd heralding, and the
discomfort of Mr. Grainger.

Howard came in. He did not see her under the shaded lamp, and she sat
watching him with a curious feeling of detachment as he unfolded his
newspaper and sank, with a sigh of content, into the cushioned chair
which Mr. Grainger had vacated. Was it fancy that her husband's physical
attributes had changed since he had attained his new position of dignity?
She could have sworn that he had visibly swollen on the evening when he
had announced to her his promotion, and he seemed to have remained
swollen. Not bloated, of course: he was fatter, and--if possible pinker.
But there was a growing suggestion in him of humming-and-hawing
greatness. If there--were leisure in this too-leisurely chronicle for
what might be called aftermath, the dinner that Honora had given to some
of her Quicksands friends might be described. Suffice it to recall, with
Honora, that Lily Dallam, with a sure instinct, had put the finger of her
wit on this new attribute of Howard's.

"You'll kill me, Howard!" she had cried. "He even looks at the soup as
though he were examining a security!"

Needless to say, it did not cure him, although it sealed Lily Dallam's
fate--and incidentally that of Quicksands. Honora's thoughts as she sat
now at the piano watching him, flew back unexpectedly to the summer at
Silverdale when she had met him, and she tried to imagine, the genial and
boyish representative of finance that he was then. In the midst of this
effort he looked up and discovered her.

"What are you doing over there, Honora?" he asked.

"Thinking," she answered.

"That's a great way to treat a man when he comes home after a day's
work."