She was indeed at a loss what to say.  She could not bring herself to ask him whether he had been influenced by Trixton Brent.  If he had, she told herself, she did not wish to know.  He was her husband, after all, and it would be too humiliating.  And then he had taken the house.

“Have you hit on a palace you like better?” he inquired, with a clumsy attempt at banter.  “They tell me the elder Maitlands are going abroad —­perhaps we could get their house on the Park.”

“You said you couldn’t afford Mrs. Rindge’s house,” she answered uneasily, “and I—­I believed you.”

“I couldn’t,” he said mysteriously, and paused.

It seemed to her, as she recalled the scene afterwards, that in this pause he gave the impression of physically swelling.  She remembered staring at him with wide, frightened eyes and parted lips.

“I couldn’t,” he repeated, with the same strange emphasis and a palpable attempt at complacency.  “But—­er—­circumstances have changed since then.”

“What do you mean, Howard?” she whispered.

The corners of his mouth twitched in the attempt to repress a smile.

“I mean,” he said, “that the president of a trust company can afford to live in a better house than the junior partner of Dallam and Spence.”

“The president of a trust company!” Honora scarcely recognized her own voice—­so distant it sounded.  The room rocked, and she clutched the arm of a chair and sat down.  He came and stood over her.

“I thought that would surprise you some,” he said, obviously pleased by these symptoms.  “The fact is, I hadn’t meant to break it to you until morning.  But I think I’ll go in on the seven thirty-five.” (He glanced significantly up at the ceiling, as though Mrs. Holt had something to do with this decision.) “President of the Orange Trust Company at forty isn’t so bad, eh?”

“The Orange Trust Company?  Did you say the Orange Trust Company?”

“Yes.”  He produced a cigarette.  “Old James Wing and Brent practically control it.  You see, if I do say it myself, I handled some things pretty well for Brent this summer, and he’s seemed to appreciate it.  He and Wing were buying in traction stocks out West.  But you could have knocked me down with a paper-knife when he came to me—­”

“When did he come to you?” she asked breathlessly.

“Yesterday.  We went down town together, you remember, and he asked me to step into his office.  Well, we talked it over, and I left on the one o’clock for Newport to see Mr. Wing.  Wonderful old man!  I sat up with him till midnight—­it wasn’t any picnic” . . .