Mrs. Lancaster threw a mask over her face.

"He says you have more than fulfilled the promise of your girlhood: that you are the handsomest woman he has seen in New York, my dear," pursued the other, looking down at her own shapely figure. "Of course, I do not agree with him, quite," she laughed. "But, then, people will differ."

"Louise Wentworth, vanity is a deadly sin," said the other, smiling, "and we are told in the Commandments--I forget which one--to envy nothing of our neighbor's."

"He said he wanted to go to see you; that you had kindly invited him, and he wished very much to meet Mr. Lancaster," said Mrs.

Wentworth, blandly.

"Yes, I am sure they will like each other," said Mrs. Lancaster, with dignity. "Mamma also is very anxious to see him. She used to know him when--when he was a boy, and liked him very much, too, though she would not acknowledge it to me then." She laughed softly at some recollection.

"He spoke of your mother most pleasantly," declared Mrs. Wentworth, not without Mrs. Lancaster noticing that she was claiming to stand as Keith's friend.

"Well, I shall not be at home to-morrow," she began. "I have promised to go out to-morrow afternoon."

"Oh, sha'n't you? Why, what a pity! because he said he was going to pay his calls to-morrow, as he expected to leave to-morrow night. I think he would be very sorry not to see you."

"Oh, well, then, I will stay in. My other engagement is of no consequence."

Her friend looked benign.

Recollecting Mrs. Wentworth's expression, Mrs. Lancaster determined that she would not be at home the following afternoon. She would show Mrs.

Wentworth that she could not gauge her so easily as she fancied. But at the last moment, after putting on her hat, she changed her mind. She remained in, and ended by inviting Keith to dinner that evening, an invitation which was so graciously seconded by Mr. Lancaster that Keith, finding that he could take a later train, accepted. Mrs. Yorke was at the dinner, too, and how gracious she was to Keith! She "could scarcely believe he was the same man she had known a few years before." She "had heard a great deal of him, and had come around to dinner on purpose to meet him." This was true.

"And you have done so well, too, I hear. Your friends are very pleased to know of your success," she said graciously.

Keith smilingly admitted that he had had, perhaps, better fortune than he deserved; but this Mrs. Yorke amiably would by no means allow.

"Mrs. Wentworth--not Louise--I mean the elder Mrs. Wentworth--was speaking of you. You and Norman were great friends when you were boys, she tells me. They were great friends of ours, you know, long before we met you."

He wondered how much the Wentworths' indors.e.m.e.nt counted for in securing Mrs. Yorke's invitation. For a good deal, he knew; but as much credit as he gave it he was within the mark.

It was only her environment. She could no more escape from that than if she were in prison. She gauged every one by what others thought, and she possessed no other gauge. Yet there was a certain friendliness, too, in Mrs. Yorke. The good lady had softened with the years, and at heart she had always liked Keith.

Most of her conversation was of her friends and their position. Alice was thinking of going abroad soon to visit some friends on the other side, "of a very distinguished family," she told Keith.

When Keith left the Lancaster house that night Alice Lancaster knew that he had wholly recovered.

CHAPTER XIX

WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY

Keith returned home and soon found himself a much bigger man in New Leeds than when he went away. The mine opened on the Rawson property began to give from the first large promises of success.

Keith picked up a newspaper one day a little later. It announced in large head-lines, as befitted the chronicling of such an event, the death of Mr. William Lancaster, capitalist. He had died suddenly in his office. His wife, it was stated, was in Europe and had been cabled the sad intelligence. There was a sketch of his life and also of that of his wife. Their marriage, it was recalled, had been one of the "romances" of the season a few years before. He had taken society by surprise by carrying off one of the belles of the season, the beautiful Miss Yorke.

The rest of the notice was taken up in conjectures as to the amount of his property and the sums he would be likely to leave to the various charitable inst.i.tutions of which he had always been a liberal patron.

Keith laid the paper down on his knee and went off in a revery. Mr.

Lancaster was dead! Of all the men he had met in New York he had in some ways struck him the most. He had appeared to him the most perfect type of a gentleman; self-contained, and inclined to be cold, but a man of elegance as well as of brains. He felt that he ought to be sorry Mr.

Lancaster was dead, and he tried to be sorry for his wife. He started to write her a letter of condolence, but stopped at the first line, and could get no further. Yet several times a day, for many days, she recurred to him, each time giving him a feeling of dissatisfaction, until at length he was able to banish her from his mind.

Prosperity is like the tide. It comes, each wave higher and higher, until it almost appears that it will never end, and then suddenly it seems to ebb a little, comes up again, recedes again, and, before one knows it, is pa.s.sing away as surely as it came.

Just when Keith thought that his tide was in full flood, it began to ebb without any apparent cause, and before he was aware of it, the prosperity which for the last few years had been setting in so steadily in those mountain regions had pa.s.sed away, and New Leeds and he were left stranded upon the rocks.

Rumor came down to New Leeds from the North. The Wickersham enterprises were said to be hard hit by some of the failures which had occurred.

A few weeks later Keith heard that Mr. Aaron Wickersham was dead. The clerks said that he had had a quarrel with his son the day after the panic and had fallen in an apoplectic fit soon afterwards. But then the old clerks had been discharged immediately after his death. Young Wickersham said he did not want any dead-wood in his offices. Also he did not want any dead property. Among his first steps was the sale of the old Keith plantation. Gordon, learning that it was for sale, got a friend to lend him the money and bought it in, though it would scarcely have been known for the same place. The mansion had been stripped of its old furniture and pictures soon after General Keith had left there, and the plantation had gone down.

Rumor also said that Wickersham's affairs were in a bad way. Certainly the new head of the house gave no sign of it. He opened a yet larger office and began operations on a more extensive scale. The _Clarion_ said that his Southern enterprises would be pushed actively, and that the stock of the Great Gun Mine would soon be on the New York Exchange.

Ferdy Wickersham suddenly returned to New Leeds, and New Leeds showed his presence. Machinery was shipped sufficient to run a dozen mines. He not only pushed the old mines, but opened a new one. It was on a slip of land that lay between the Rawson property and the stream that ran down from the mountain. Some could not understand why he should run the shaft there, unless it was that he was bent on cutting the Rawson property off from the stream. It was a perilous location for a shaft, and Matheson, the superintendent, had protested against it.

Matheson's objections proved to be well founded. The mine was opened so near the stream that water broke through into it, as Matheson had predicted, and though a strong wall was built, the water still got in, and it was difficult to keep it pumped out sufficiently to work. Some of the men struck. It was known that Wickersham had nearly come to a rupture with the hard-headed Scotchman over it; but Wickersham won.

Still, the coal did not come. It was a.s.serted that the shafts had failed to reach coal. Wickersham laughed and kept on--kept on till coal did come. It was heralded abroad. The _Clarion_ devoted columns to the success of the "Great Gun Mine" and Wickersham.

Wickersham naturally showed his triumph. He celebrated it in a great banquet at the New Windsor, at which speeches were made which likened him to Napoleon and several other generals. Mr. Plume declared him "greater than Themistocles, for he could play the lute and make a small city a great one."

Wickersham himself made a speech, in which he professed his joy that he had silenced the tongue of slander and wrested from detraction a victory not for himself, but for New Leeds. His enemies and the enemies of New Leeds were, he declared, the same. They would soon see his enemies suing for aid. He was applauded to the echo. All this and much more was in the _Clarion_ next day, with some very pointed satire about "rival mines."

Keith, meantime, was busy poring over plats and verifying lines.

The old squire came to town a morning or two later. "I see Mr.

Wickersham's struck coal at last," he said to Keith, after he had got his pipe lit. His face showed that he was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with information.

"Yes--_our_ coal." Keith showed him the plats. "He is over our line--I do not know just where, but in here somewhere."

The old fellow put on his spectacles and looked long and carefully.

"He says he owns it all; that he'll have us suin' for pardon?"

"Suing for damages."

The old squire gave a chuckle of satisfaction. "He is in and about _there_." He pointed with a stout and h.o.r.n.y finger.

"How did you know?"

"Well, you see, little Dave Dennison--you remember Dave? You taught him."

"Perfectly--I mean, I remember him perfectly. He is now in New York."

"Yes. Well, Dave he used to be sweet on Phrony, and he seems to be still sweet on her."

Mr. Keith nodded.

"Well, of course, Phrony she's lookin' higher than Dave--but you know how women air?"