recognized her value both as a helpmate to him and an ornament to the State.  She took up her life as the Governor’s lady feeling that her talents and eagerness to do good had finally prevailed and that true happiness at last was in store for her.  She was satisfied with her husband and recognized his righteous purpose and capacity as a statesman, but she believed secretly that his rapid success was due in a large measure to her genius.  Her prompting had inspired him to make a notable speech in his first Congress.  Her charms and clever conversation had magnetized Mr. Elton so that he had seen fit to nominate him for Governor.  A fresh impulse to her self-congratulation that virtue and ability were reaping their reward was given a few weeks later by the announcement which Lyons read from the morning newspaper that the firm of Williams & Van Horne had failed disastrously.  The circumstances attending their down-fall were sensational.  It appeared that Van Horne, the office partner, who managed the finances, had shot himself as the culmination of a series of fraudulent hypothecations of securities and misrepresentations to which it was claimed that Williams was not a party.  The firm had been hopelessly insolvent for months, and had been forced to the wall at last by a futile effort on the part of Van Horne to redeem the situation by a final speculation on a large scale.  It had failed owing to the continuation of the state of dry rot in the stock market, and utter ruin followed.

The regret which Lyons entertained as he read aloud the tragic story was overshadowed in his mind by his own thankfulness that he had redeemed the bonds and settled his account with them before the crash came.  He was so absorbed by his own emotions that he failed to note the triumphant tone of his wife’s ejaculation of amazement.  “Failed!  Williams & Van Horne failed!  Oh, how did it happen?  I always felt sure that they would fail sooner or later.”

Selma sat with tightly folded hands listening to the exciting narrative, which Lyons read for her edification with the urbanely mournful emphasis of one who has had a narrow escape.  He stopped in the course of it to relieve any solicitude which she might be feeling in regard to his dealings with the firm, by the assertion that he had only two months previous closed out his account owing to the conviction that prudent investors were getting under cover.  This assurance gave the episode a still more providential aspect in Selma’s eyes.  In the first flush of her gratitude that Flossy had been superbly rebuked for her frivolous existence, she had forgotten that they were her husband’s brokers.  Moreover the lack of perturbation in his manner was not calculated to inspire alarm.  But the news that Lyons had been shrewd enough to escape at the twelfth hour without a dollar’s loss heightened the justice of the situation.  She listened with throbbing pulses to the particulars.  She could scarcely credit her senses that her irrepressible and light-hearted enemy had been confounded at last—­confronted with bankruptcy and probable disgrace.  She interrupted the reading to express her scepticism regarding the claim that Williams had no knowledge of the frauds.