“At any rate,” declared Honora, trying to control her voice, “I’ve decided, now I’ve seen it a second time, that I don’t want it.  I only wished him to look at it,” she added, scornfully aware that she was taking up the cudgels in his behalf.  But she could not bring herself, in Brent’s presence, to declare that the argument of the rent seemed decisive.

Her exasperation was somewhat increased by the expression on Trixton Brent’s face, which plainly declared that he deemed her last remarks to be the quintessence of tactics; and he obstinately refused, as they went down the stairs to the street, to regard the matter as closed.

“I’ll take him down town in the Elevated,” he said, as he put her into the carriage.  “The first round’s a draw.”

She directed the driver to the ferry again, and went back to Quicksands.  Several times during the day she was on the point of telephoning Brent not to try to persuade Howard to rent the house, and once she even got so far as to take down the receiver.  But when she reflected, it seemed an impossible thing to do.  At four o’clock she herself was called to the telephone by Mr. Cray, a confidential clerk in Howard’s office, who informed her that her husband had been obliged to leave town suddenly on business, and would not be home that night.

“Didn’t he say where he was going?” asked Honora.

“He didn’t even tell me, Mrs. Spence,” Cray replied, and Mr. Dallam doesn’t know.”

“Oh, dear,” said Honora, “I hope he realizes that people are coming for dinner to-morrow evening.”

“I’m positive, from what he said, that he’ll be back some time to-morrow,” Cray reassured her.

She refused an invitation to dine out, and retired shortly after her own dinner with a novel so distracting that she gradually regained an equable frame of mind.  The uneasiness, the vague fear of the future, wore away, and she slept peacefully.  In the morning, however; she found on her breakfast tray a note from Trixton Brent.

Her first feeling after reading it was one of relief that he had not mentioned the house.  He had written from a New York club, asking her to lunch with him at Delmonico’s that day and drive home in the motor.  No answer was required:  if she did not appear at one o’clock, he would know she couldn’t come.

Honora took the eleven o’clock train, which gave her an hour after she arrived in New York to do as she pleased.  Her first idea, as she stood for a moment amidst the clamour of the traffic in front of the ferry house, was to call on Mrs. Holt at that lady’s hotel; and then she remembered that the Charities Conference began at eleven, and decided to pay a visit to Madame Dumond, who made a specialty of importing novelties in dress.  Her costume for the prospective excursion in the automobile had cost Honora some thought that morning.  As the day was cool, she had brought along an ulster that was irreproachable.  But how about the hat and veil?