In these savage hours the mind of John Rawn cast about for rescue, for hope. No rescue, no hope, appeared except one last desperate alternative, purchasable not now with cash or power or influence--since these were gone--but with what other and dearer things remain to a man--things some men, not rotted with the love of self, keep through any or all disaster, prize, even above life and all a life's business success. Halsey! Ah! Halsey was the savior of Rawn--Halsey, the man who had humiliated him in his own home. How could Halsey be secured? There might be brought to bear upon him one influence--that of a beautiful and fascinating woman! What matter if the one woman, was his wife, Virginia Rawn? He had already hinted to her of her duty. He wondered now continually whether she had really and fully understood. He wondered what she was doing with Halsey. As to Halsey, who knew little or nothing of all these turbulent emotions, all these crowding incidents, he found his situation in the great house of John Rawn one wholly to his dislike. He saw little of his wife Grace after the first conventional greeting on his arrival, and as to the young mistress of Graystone Hall, she seemed so regularly to have matters demanding her own presence elsewhere, was so busy with other matters, as to have small time for him. The disturbed condition of the stock market was creating a furor in the business world, reflected, of course, in the daily markets of the western city; but Halsey had never had many investments, had watched the markets little; and now, isolated at Graystone Hall almost as much as though upon a desert island, and too much disturbed and distracted in his own mind to find any definite interest in business matters, was hardly conscious of the storm that raged. He simply waited on, unhappily. It seemed to him there was no place for him in all the world. Why did Virginia remain aloof?