“’Tis sharp, Wash,” replied Cowperwood, absentmindedly.  He was thinking for the moment of the house and how it had looked, as he came toward it west along Girard Avenue—­what the neighbors were thinking of him, too, observing him from time to time out of their windows.  It was clear and cold.  The lamps in the reception-hall and sitting-room had been lit, for he had permitted no air of funereal gloom to settle down over this place since his troubles had begun.  In the far west of the street a last tingling gleam of lavender and violet was showing over the cold white snow of the roadway.  The house of gray-green stone, with its lighted windows, and cream-colored lace curtains, had looked especially attractive.  He had thought for the moment of the pride he had taken in putting all this here, decorating and ornamenting it, and whether, ever, he could secure it for himself again.  “Where is your mistress?” he added to Wash, when he bethought himself.

“In the sitting-room, Mr. Coppahwood, ah think.”

Cowperwood ascended the stairs, thinking curiously that Wash would soon be out of a job now, unless Mrs. Cowperwood, out of all the wreck of other things, chose to retain him, which was not likely.  He entered the sitting-room, and there sat his wife by the oblong center-table, sewing a hook and eye on one of Lillian, second’s, petticoats.  She looked up, at his step, with the peculiarly uncertain smile she used these days—­indication of her pain, fear, suspicion—­and inquired, “Well, what is new with you, Frank?” Her smile was something like a hat or belt or ornament which one puts on or off at will.

“Nothing in particular,” he replied, in his offhand way, “except that I understand I have lost that appeal of mine.  Steger is coming here in a little while to let me know.  I had a note from him, and I fancy it’s about that.”

He did not care to say squarely that he had lost.  He knew that she was sufficiently distressed as it was, and he did not care to be too abrupt just now.

“You don’t say!” replied Lillian, with surprise and fright in her voice, and getting up.

She had been so used to a world where prisons were scarcely thought of, where things went on smoothly from day to day without any noticeable intrusion of such distressing things as courts, jails, and the like, that these last few months had driven her nearly mad.  Cowperwood had so definitely insisted on her keeping in the background—­he had told her so very little that she was all at sea anyhow in regard to the whole procedure.  Nearly all that she had had in the way of intelligence had been from his father and mother and Anna, and from a close and almost secret scrutiny of the newspapers.

At the time he had gone to the county jail she did not even know anything about it until his father had come back from the court-room and the jail and had broken the news to her.  It had been a terrific blow to her.  Now to have this thing suddenly broken to her in this offhand way, even though she had been expecting and dreading it hourly, was too much.