But that for the moment had gone. He turned on his elbow and glanced over at a card-case which lay among the silver-backed brushes beyond, and at once the shock he had resummoned fled. Ah, yes! it had gone indeed, but at the moment it had been appalling enough. The morrow at least was secure; and as he pondered over its possibilities they faded before certain episodes of the previous day--that chance encounter with Alphabet Jones, who had insisted he should pack a valise and go down with Trement Yarde and himself to Tuxedo; and at once the incidents succeeding the arrival paraded through his thoughts. There had been the late dinner to begin with; then the dance; the girl to whom some one had presented him, and with whom he had sat it out; the escape of the year, the health that was drunk to the new one, and afterwards the green baize in the card-room; the bank which Trement Yarde had held, and finally the successful operation that followed, and which consisted in cutting that cherub's throat to the tune of three thousand dollars. It was all there now in the card-case; and though, as sums of money go, it was hardly quotable, yet in the abstract, forethought and economy aiding, it represented several months of horizons solid and real. The day was secure; as for the future, who knew what it might contain? A grave perhaps, and in it his aunt. II. "If I had been killed in a duel I couldn't be better." It was Jones the novelist describing the state of his health. "But how is my friend and brother in virtue?" "Utterly ramollescent," Roland answered, confidingly. "What the French call _gaga_." The mid-day meal was in progress, and the two men, seated opposite each other, were dividing a Demidorf salad. They had been schoolmates at Concord, and despite the fact that until the day before they had not met for a decennium, the happy-go-lucky intimacy of earlier days had eluded Time and still survived. Throughout the glass-enclosed piazza other people were lunching, and every now and then Jones, catching a wandering eye, would bend forward a little and smile. Though it was but the first of the year, the weather resembled that of May. One huge casement was wide open. There was sunlight everywhere, flowers too, and beyond you could see the sky, a dome of opal and sapphire blent. "Well," Jones replied, "I can't say you have altered much. But then who does? You remember, don't you"--and Jones ran on with some anecdote of earlier days.