Chapter 27 - Page 2

done about her? I pity
Mrs. Manson Mingott as much as anybody: coming at
her age, there's no knowing what effect this affair may
have on her. She always believed in Beaufort--she made
a friend of him! And there's the whole Dallas connection:
poor Mrs. Beaufort is related to every one of you.
Her only chance would be to leave her husband--yet
how can any one tell her so? Her duty is at his side;
and luckily she seems always to have been blind to his
private weaknesses."

There was a knock, and Mr. Letterblair turned his
head sharply. "What is it? I can't be disturbed."

A clerk brought in a letter for Archer and withdrew.
Recognising his wife's hand, the young man opened
the envelope and read: "Won't you please come up
town as early as you can? Granny had a slight stroke
last night. In some mysterious way she found out before
any one else this awful news about the bank.
Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and the idea of the
disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a
temperature and can't leave his room. Mamma needs
you dreadfully, and I do hope you can get away at once
and go straight to Granny's."

Archer handed the note to his senior partner, and a
few minutes later was crawling northward in a crowded
horse-car, which he exchanged at Fourteenth Street for
one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth Avenue
line. It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious
vehicle dropped him at old Catherine's. The
sitting-room window on the ground floor, where she
usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure
of her daughter, Mrs. Welland, who signed a haggard
welcome as she caught sight of Archer; and at the door
he was met by May. The hall wore the unnatural
appearance peculiar to well-kept houses suddenly
invaded by illness: wraps and furs lay in heaps on the
chairs, a doctor's bag and overcoat were on the table,
and beside them letters and cards had already piled up
unheeded.

May looked pale but smiling: Dr. Bencomb, who
had just come for the second time, took a more hopeful
view, and Mrs. Mingott's dauntless determination to
live and get well was already having an effect on her
family. May led Archer into the old lady's sitting-room,
where the sliding doors opening into the bedroom had
been drawn shut, and the heavy yellow damask portieres
dropped over them; and here Mrs. Welland communicated
to him in horrified undertones the details of
the catastrophe. It appeared that the evening before
something dreadful and mysterious had happened. At
about eight o'clock, just after Mrs. Mingott had finished
the game of solitaire that she always played after
dinner, the door-bell had rung, and a lady so thickly