The library of John Schuyler's town house was a large room, done in dull browns and deep greens. All that good taste and a sufficient purse could do to beautify it--to render it alike pleasing and restful to the eye, comforting and satisfying to the soul, had been done. Carpeting was deep and rich. The walls were panelled of mahogany, and the bookshelves sunk into their dull depths. On either side of the door leading to the hall hung a painting, the one a Turner, the other a Corregio. There was a fireplace--a huge fireplace wherein might lie a four-foot log; above it a mirrored mantel; before it the skin of a jaguar. Across from this, a narrow flight of stairs led to the private apartments of the owner. It was early fall now. The roses in the garden of the Larchmont place had withered, and fallen. It had been a dun morning, a morning of dull gray.... Schuyler sat at the big, mahogany desk in the center of his library. Papers lay spread upon the table before him. A decanter of cut glass and silver lay there, also. The Schuyler that had come was different, very, from the Schuyler that had gone. He was still quick, agile, alert; but there was gone from his clean-cut face the expression of cheerful optimism--of confident happiness--of all-spreading good-fellowship. Little wrinkles had gathered at eye-corners--deeper were the lines that ran from nostrils to the ends of his mouth. But these changes one might not have noticed were it not for the eyes. For, from these the light had gone. They were as lamps unlit. Yet was there one other change apparent; for while before he had concentrated easily upon that which he had to do, now it was with difficulty--almost, even, with impossibility. He paused, often, to pour from the decanter a little brandy into a small glass, and to drink that which he had poured. He rose from his chair, to stride nervously, up and down, up and down. He seated himself only to drink again; he drank again only to rise again; he rose again only to sit again. He rapped, at length, upon the little bell that lay upon the table. Waited; then rapped again. And his brows creased in petulance. "Now where the devil is Parks?" he muttered, nervously. He waited; and drank while waiting. Then rang again the bell. Even as its mellow note pierced the silence of the room, the door opened, and Parks entered. He crossed to the desk, and laid upon it a bundle of documents that he had brought. At his clear-cut face Schuyler looked. "Well, here you are at last, eh? Anyone would think that I had sent you to Singapore for those papers instead of merely upstairs." "I'm very sorry, sir," was Parks' quiet response. Schuyler took the papers, drawing them to him. "That's all," he said, curtly. "You may go." "But--" "I said you might go." Parks still hesitated. Schuyler looked at him angrily. "I merely wished to say," Parks spoke deferentially, even soothingly, and possibly a bit reluctantly, "that there is a lady--"