Meantime affairs took their usual course.  The downfall of Mavick is too well known in the Street to need explanation here.  For a time it was hoped that sacrifices of great interests would leave a modest little fortune, but under the pressure of liquidation these hopes melted away.  If anything could be saved it would be only comparatively valueless securities and embarrassed bits of property that usually are only a delusion and a source of infinite worry to a bankrupt.  It seemed incredible that such a vast fortune should so disappear; but there were wise men who, so they declared, had always predicted this disaster.  For some years after Henderson’s death the fortune had appeared to expand marvelously.  It was, however, expanded, and not solidified.  It had been risked in many gigantic speculations (such as the Argentine), and it had been liable to collapse at any time if its central credit was doubted.  Mavick’s combinations were splendidly conceived, but he lacked the power of coordination.  And great as were his admitted abilities, he had never inspired confidence.

“And, besides,” said Uncle Jerry, philosophizing about it in his homely way, “there’s that little devil of a Carmen, the most fascinating woman I ever knew—­it would take the Bank of England to run her.  Why, when I see that Golden House going up, I said I’d give ’em five years to balloon in it.  I was mistaken.  They’ve floated it about eighteen.  Some folks are lucky—­up to a certain point.”

Grave history gives but a paragraph to a personal celebrity of this sort.  When a ship goes down in a tempest off the New England coast, there is a brief period of public shock and sympathy, and then the world passes on to other accidents and pleasures; but for months relics of the great vessel float ashore on lonely headlands or are cast up on sandy beaches, and for years, in many a home made forlorn by the shipwreck, are aching hearts and an ever-present calamity.

The disaster of the house of Mavick was not accepted without a struggle, lasting long after the public interest in the spectacle had abated—­a struggle to save the ship and then to pick up some debris from the great wreck.  The most pathetic sight in the business world is that of a bankrupt, old and broken, pursuing with always deluded expectations the remnants of his fortune, striving to make new combinations, involved in lawsuits, alternately despairing, alternately hopeful in the chaos of his affairs.  This was the fate of Thomas Mavick.

The news was all over Newport in a few hours after it had stricken down Mrs. Mavick.  The newspaper details the morning after were read with that eager interest that the misfortunes of neighbors always excite.  After her first stupor, Mrs. Mavick refused to believe it.  It could not be, and her spirit of resistance rose with the frantic messages she sent to her husband.  Alas, the cold fact of the assignment remained.  Still her courage was not quite beaten down.