“I was never so outrageously treated in my life. The idea that my daughter’s husband should be ashamed of me! I hope you will not misjudge me--you have not always been just with me; but I only did what was entirely proper. The fact that he thought I had gone abroad after your marriage had nothing to do with it, though he seemed to think it strange you hadn’t told him of any change of plans. It was none of his business.... I mailed him my card and a line that I would like to see him. I read in the papers that he was at the Broderick’s, and your note told me that you would not be here. Why you didn’t come I still don’t understand. I sent my card to him and waited a day. Then on the afternoon of the second day I went to the house and asked for him. Oh, you needn’t curl your lip; I tell you I don’t intend to have him ignore me in that fashion. They told me he was resting, but I wasn’t to be put off. He came down and was decent enough at first; then said he had to be excused as he was to speak that night and needed rest. I held him long enough to tell him that I had got tired of waiting for an invitation to visit you and that I was coming down right away. He said that you were free to do as you liked about having visitors; that he supposed I was in Italy. I mildly suggested that I was a little short of money, and he shut up like a clam. A lady--I suppose it was _the_ Mrs. Broderick you hear so much about--you know we saw her three years ago in Paris--passed right through the hall and he never so much as offered to introduce me. I expect to leave Sunday night and spend Monday in New York and be with you Tuesday. This gives you a day or two to bring him around----” “Mr. Walsh is waiting,” announced the maid. She thrust the letter into a drawer of her desk and went down. Walsh was turning the cutter in the courtyard at the rear of the house and drove into the covered entrance as she opened the door. With a merry jingle of bells they were off. She was relieved to find that it was not incumbent upon her to talk. Walsh’s interest was wholly in the mare, Estabrook stock, he informed her, whose swift, even pace he watched with delight. When, after traversing one of the boulevards, they swept into the park, many other horsemen, making the most of the fine sleighing, looked twice at Walsh, who, for the first time within man’s knowledge, was driving with a woman beside him. These horsemen did not know Mrs. Craighill; and even the few acquaintances they passed seemed not to recognize her. Walsh bent toward her now and then, without taking his eyes from the mare, and shouted short sentences which she did not always hear, but he seemed to be speaking of the horses rather than of the persons who drove them. When other sleighs passed, the bells crashed discordantly in her ears for a moment; then the rhythmic, tuneless jangle from the long-striding mare floated back upon them like an echo.