Mrs. Presbury, whom indigestion had rendered stupid, could think of no reply. So she burst into tears. "And my own daughter sitting silent while that man insults her mother!" she sobbed.

Mildred sat stiff and cold.

"It'll be a week before I recover from that dinner," Presbury went on sourly. "What a dinner! What a villainous mess! These vulgar, showy rich! That champagne! He said it cost him six dollars a bottle, and no doubt it did. I doubt if it ever saw France. The dealers rarely waste genuine wine on such cattle. The wine-cellars of fine houses the world through are the laughing-stock of connoisseurs--like their picture-galleries and their other attempts to make money do the work of taste. I forgot to put my pills in my bag. I'll have to hunt up an all-night drug-store. I'd not dare go to bed without taking an antidote for that poison."

But Presbury had not been altogether improvident. He had hoped great things of Bill Siddall's wine-cellar--this despite an almost unbroken series of bitter disillusionments and disappointments in experience with those who had the wealth to buy, if they had had the taste to select, the fine wines he loved. So, resolving to indulge himself, he had put into his bag his pair of gout-boots.

This was a device of his own inventing, on which he prided himself. It consisted of a pair of roomy doe-skin slippers reenforced with heavy soles and provided with a set of three thin insoles to be used according as the state of his toes made advisable. The cost of the Presbury gout-boot had been, thanks to patient search for a cheap cobbler, something under four dollars--this, when men paid shoe specialists twenty, thirty, and even forty dollars a pair for gout-boots that gave less comfort. The morning after the dinner at which he had drunk to drown his chagrin and to give him courage and tongue for sycophantry, he put on the boots. Without them it would have been necessary to carry him from his room to a cab and from cab to train. With them he was able to hobble to a street-car. He tried to distract his mind from his sufferings by lashing away without ceasing at his wife and his step-daughter.

When they were once more at home, and the mother and daughter escaped from him, the mother said:

"I was glad to see that you put up with that wretch, and didn't answer him back."

"Of course," said Mildred. "He's mad to be rid of me, but if I offended him he might s.n.a.t.c.h away this chance."

"He would," said Mrs. Presbury. "I'm sure he would. But--" she laughed viciously--"once you're married you can revenge yourself--and me!"

"I wonder," said Mildred thoughtfully.

"Why not?" exclaimed her mother, irritated.

"I can't make Mr. Presbury out," replied the girl. "I understand why he's helping me to this chance, but I don't understand why he isn't making friends with me, in the hope of getting something after I'm married."

Her mother saw the point, and was instantly agitated. "Perhaps he's simply leading you on, intending to upset it all at the last minute."

She gritted her teeth. "Oh, what a wretch!"

Mildred was not heeding. "I must have General Siddall looked up carefully," she went on. "It may be that he isn't rich, or that he has another wife somewhere, or that there's some other awful reason why marrying him would be even worse than it seems."

"Worse than it seems!" cried her mother. "How CAN you talk so, Milly!

The general seems to be an ideal husband--simply ideal! I wish _I_ had your chance. Any sensible woman could love him."

A strange look came into the girl's face, and her mother could not withstand her eyes. "Don't, mother," she said quietly. "Either you take me for a fool or you are trying to show me that you have no self-respect. I am not deceiving myself about what I'm doing."

Mrs. Presbury opened her lips to remonstrate, changed her mind, drew a deep sigh. "It's frightful to be a woman," she said.

"To be a lady, Mr. Presbury would say," suggested Mildred.

After some discussion, they fixed upon Joseph Tilker as the best available investigator of General Siddall. Tilker had been head clerk for Henry Gower. He was now in for himself and had offered to look after any legal business Mrs. Presbury might have without charging her.

He presently reported that there was not a doubt as to the wealth of the little general. "There are all sorts of ugly stories about how he made his money," said Tilker; "but all the great fortunes have a scandalous history, and I doubt if Siddall's is any worse than the others. I don't see how it well could be. Siddall has the reputation of being a mean and cruel little tyrant. He is said to be pompous, vain, ignorant--"

"Indeed he's not," cried Mrs. Presbury. "He's a rough diamond, but a natural gentleman. I've met him."

"Well, he's rich enough, and that was all you asked me to find out,"

said Tilker. "But I must warn you, Mrs. Presbury, not to have any business or intimate personal relations with him."

Mrs. Presbury congratulated herself on her wisdom in having come alone to hear Tilker's report. She did not repeat any part of it to Mildred except what he had said about the wealth. That she enlarged upon until Mildred's patience gave out. She interrupted with a shrewd:

"Anything else, mamma? Anything about him personally?"

"We've got to judge him in that way for ourselves," replied Mrs.

Presbury. "You know how wickedly they lie about anyone who has anything."

"I should like to read a full account of General Siddall," said Mildred reflectively; "just to satisfy my curiosity."

Mrs. Presbury made no reply.

Presbury had decided that it was best to make no advance, but to wait until they heard from Siddall. He let a week, ten days, go by; then his impatience got the better of his shrewdness. He sought admittance to the great man at the offices of the International Metals and Minerals Company in Cedar Street. After being subjected to varied indignities by sundry under-strappers, he received a message from the general through a secretary: "The general says he'll let you know when he's ready to take up that matter. He says he hasn't got round to it yet." Presbury apologized courteously for his intrusion and went away, cursing under his breath. You may be sure that he made his wife and his stepdaughter suffer for what he had been through. Two weeks more pa.s.sed--three--a month. One morning in the mail there arrived this note--type-written upon business paper:

JAMES PRESBURY, Esqr.:

DEAR SIR:

General Siddall asks me to present his compliments and to say that he will be pleased if you and your wife and the young lady will dine with him at his house next Thursday the seventeenth at half-past seven sharp.

ROBERT CHANDLESS, Secretary.

The only words in longhand were the two forming the name of the secretary. Presbury laughed and tossed the note across the breakfast table to his wife. "You see what an ignorant creature he is," said he.

"He imagines he has done the thing up in grand style. He's the sort of man that can't be taught manners because he thinks manners, the ordinary civilities, are for the lower orders of people. Oh, he's a joke, is Bill Siddall--a horrible joke."

Mrs. Presbury read and pa.s.sed the letter to Mildred. She simply glanced at it and returned it to her step-father.

"I'm just about over that last dinner," pursued Presbury. "I'll eat little Thursday and drink less. And I'd advise you to do the same, Mrs.

Presbury."

He always addressed her as "Mrs. Presbury" because he had discovered that when so addressed she always winced, and, if he put a certain tone into his voice, she quivered.

"That dinner aged you five years," he went on. "Besides, you drank so much that it went to your head and made you slather him with flatteries that irritated him. He thought you were a fool, and no one is stupid enough to like to be flattered by a fool."

Mrs. Presbury bridled, swallowed hard, said mildly: "We'll have to spend the night in town again, I suppose."

"You and your daughter may do as you like," said Presbury. "I shall return here that night. I always catch cold in strange beds."

"We might as well all return here," said Mildred. "I shall not wear evening dress; that is, I'll wear a high-neck dress and a hat."

She had just got a new hat that was peculiarly becoming to her. She had shown Siddall herself at the best in evening attire; another sort of costume would give him a different view of her looks, one which she flattered herself was not less attractive. But Presbury interposed an emphatic veto.

"You'll wear full evening dress," said he. "Bare neck and arms for men like Bill Siddall. They want to see what they're getting."

Mildred flushed scarlet and her lips trembled as though she were about to cry. In fact, her emotion was altogether shame--a shame so poignant that even Presbury was abashed, and mumbled something apologetic.

Nevertheless she wore a low-neck dress on Thursday evening, one as daring as the extremely daring fashions of that year permitted an unmarried woman to wear. It seemed to her that Siddall was still more costly and elegant-looking than before, though this may have been due to the fact that he always created an impression that in the retrospect of memory seemed exaggerated. It seemed impossible that anyone could be so clean, so polished and scoured, so groomed and tailored, so bedecked, so high-heeled and loftily coiffed. His mean little countenance with its grotesquely waxed mustache and imperial wore an expression of gracious benignity that a.s.sured his guests they need antic.i.p.ate no disagreeable news.

"I owe you an apology for keeping you in suspense so long," said he.

"I'm a very busy man, with interests in all parts of the world. I keep house--some of 'em bigger than this--open and going in six different places. I always like to be at home wherever my business takes me."

Mrs. Presbury rolled her eyes. "Isn't that WONDERFUL!" she exclaimed.

"What an interesting life you must lead!"