“Oh, I understand,” said Montague.

“And don’t you see that I cannot leave him?” exclaimed Lucy.  “Now of all times—­when he needs help—­when his enemies have surrounded him?  I’m the only person in the world who cares anything about him—­who really understands him—­”

Montague could think of nothing to say.

“I know how it hurts you,” said Lucy, “and don’t think that I have not cared.  It is a thought that never leaves me!  But some day I know that you will understand; and the rest of the world—­I don’t care what the world says.”

“All right, Lucy,” he answered, sadly.  “I see that I can’t be of any help to you.  I won’t trouble you any more.”

CHAPTER XVIII

Another month passed by.  Montague was buried in his work, and he caught but faint echoes of the storm that rumbled in the financial world.  It was a thing which he thought of with wonder in future times—­that he should have had so little idea of what was coming.  He seemed to himself like some peasant who digs with bent head in a field, while armies are marshalling for battle all around him; and who is startled suddenly by the crash of conflict, and the bursting of shells about his head.

There came another great convulsion of the stock market.  Stewart, the young Lochinvar out of the West, made an attempt to corner copper.  One heard wild rumours in relation to the crash which followed.  Some said that a traitor had sold out the pool; others, that there had been a quarrel among the conspirators.  However that might be, copper broke, and once more there were howling mobs on the curb, and a shudder throughout the financial district.  Then suddenly, like a thunderbolt, came tidings that a conference of the big bankers had decreed that the young Lochinvar should be forced out of his New York banks.  There were rumours that other banks were involved, and that there were to be more conferences.  Then a couple of days later came the news that all the banks of Cummings the Ice King were in trouble, and that he too had been forced from the field.

Montague had never seen anything like the excitement in Wall Street.  Everyone he met had a new set of rumours, wilder than the last.  It was as if a great rift in the earth had suddenly opened before the eyes of the banking community.  But Montague was at an important crisis in a suit which he had taken up against the Tobacco Trust; and he had no idea that he was in any way concerned in what was taking place.  The newspapers were all making desperate efforts to allay the anxiety—­they said that all the trouble was over, that Dan Waterman had come to the rescue of the imperilled institutions.  And Montague believed what he read, and went his way.

Three or four days after the crisis had developed, he had an engagement to dine with his friend Harvey.  Montague was tired after a long day in court, and as no one else was coming, and he did not intend to dress, he walked up town from his office to Harvey’s hotel, a place of entertainment much frequented by Society people.  Harvey rented an entire floor, and had had it redecorated especially to suit his taste.