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.”

“I beg your pardon, Howard,” she said with unusual meekness.  “Who do you think was here this afternoon?”

“Erwin?  I’ve just come from Mr. Wing’s house—­he has gout to-day and didn’t go down town.  He offered Erwin a hundred thousand a year to come to New York as corporation counsel.  And if you’ll believe me—­he refused it.”

“I’ll believe you,” she said.

“Did he say anything about it to you?”

“He simply mentioned that Mr. Wing asked him to come to New York.  He didn’t say why.”

“Well,” Howard remarked, “he’s one too many for me.  He can’t be making over thirty thousand where he is.”

CHAPTER II

THE PATH OF PHILANTHROPY

Mrs. Cecil Grainger may safely have been called a Personality, and one of the proofs of this was that she haunted people who had never seen her.  Honora might have looked at her, it is true, on the memorable night of the dinner with Mrs. Holt and Trixton Brent; but—­for sufficiently obvious reasons—­refrained.  It would be an exaggeration to say that Mrs. Grainger became an obsession with our heroine; yet it cannot be denied that, since Honora’s arrival at Quicksands, this lady had, in increasing degrees, been the subject of her speculations.  The threads of Mrs. Grainger’s influence were so ramified, indeed, as to be found in Mrs. Dallam, who declared she was the rudest woman in New York and yet had copied her brougham; in Mr. Cuthbert and Trixton Brent; in Mrs. Kame; in Mrs. Holt, who proclaimed her a tower of strength in charities; and lastly in Mr. Grainger himself, who, although he did not spend much time in his wife’s company, had for her an admiration that amounted to awe.

Elizabeth Grainger, who was at once modern and tenaciously conservative, might have been likened to some of the Roman matrons of the aristocracy in the last years of the Republic.  Her family, the Pendletons, had traditions:  so, for that matter, had the Graingers.  But Senator Pendleton, antique homo virtute et fide, had been a Roman of the old school who would have preferred exile after the battle of Philippi; and who, could he have foreseen modern New York and modern finance, would have been more content to die when he did.  He had lived in Washington Square.  His daughter inherited his executive ability, many of his prejudices (as they would now be called), and his habit of regarding favourable impressions with profound suspicion.  She had never known the necessity of making friends:  hers she had inherited, and for some reason specially decreed, they were better than those of less fortunate people.