Then on a fateful night Lyman Teaford assumed a new and disquieting value in his life.  Lyman Teaford, who for a dozen years had gone with Winona Penniman faithfully if not spectacularly; Lyman Teaford, dignified and genteel, who belonged to Newbern’s better set, had one night appeared at an affair of the Friday Night Social Club.  Perhaps because he had reached the perilous forties he had suddenly determined to abandon the safe highway and seek adventure in miry bypaths.  Perhaps he felt that he had austerely played the flute too long.  At any rate, he came and danced with the lower element of Newbern, not oftener with Pearl than with others that first night.  But he came again and danced much oftener with Pearl.  There was no quick, hot alarm in the breast of Wilbur Cowan.  Lyman Teaford was an old man, chiefly notable, in Wilbur’s opinion, for the remarkable fluency of his Adam’s apple while—­with chin aloft—­he played high notes on his silver flute.

Yet dimly at last he felt discomfort at Lyman’s crude persistence with Pearl.  He danced with others now only when Pearl was firm in refusals.  Wilbur to her jested with venomous sarcasm at the expense of Lyman.  Women were difficult to understand, he thought.  What could her motive be?

The drama, Greek in its severity, culminated with a hideous, a sickening velocity.  On a Monday morning, in but moderate torment at Pearl’s inconsistency, Wilbur Cowan sat at the linotype in the Advance office, swiftly causing type metal to become communicative about the week’s doings in Newbern.  He hung a finished sheet of Sam Pickering’s pencilled copy on a hook, and casually surveyed the sheet beneath.  It was a social item, he saw—­the notice of a marriage.  Then names amazingly leaped from it to sear his defenseless eyes.  Lyman Teaford—­Miss Pearl King!  He gasped and looked about him.  The familiar routine of the office was under way.  In his little room beyond he could see Sam Pickering scribbling other items.  He constrained himself to read the monstrous slander before him.

“Lyman N. Teaford, one of our best-known business men, was last evening united in the bonds of holy wedlock to Miss Pearl King, for some months employed at the Mansion House.  The marriage service was performed by the Reverend Mallett at the parsonage, and was attended by only a few chosen friends.  The happy pair left on the six-fifty-eight for a brief honeymoon at Niagara Falls, and on their return will occupy the Latimer mansion on North Oak Street, recently purchased by the groom in view of his approaching nuptials.  A wide circle of friends wish them all happiness.”