But Dr. Chirnside was putting up his pencil and putting forth his lean, cold hand for a farewell clasp. The stage was nearing City Hall Park and he must get out his fare and get down at his parsonage. And a little further below was the Astor House, which RoBards must call home henceforth. Dr. Chirnside had referred for his “thirteenthly” to the barbaric luxury of the new hotel, and to the evil influence of such hostelries on home-life. It had a bathtub on every floor! What Oriental luxury would come next? In many of the more religious states bathing was a misdemeanor, but in New York every crime flourished—and every slothfulness. The modern woman, unlike her mother, was too shiftless to care for her own household or even to oversee her servants: she preferred to live in a hotel and have more time and convenience for her idle mischiefs. But RoBards mused dismally that his home had gone to wrack and ruin first, and that the hotel was his only refuge. CHAPTER XV The sumptuousness of the Astor House only emphasized RoBards’ exile. From his window he would look down upon the seething throngs along Broadway, the tall beavers of the men and the poke bonnets of the women bobbing along as on a stream. He would seek escape from solitude overlooking the multitude by retreating to the inner court and the fountain flaunting its crystal plumes in the turfed garden. But there was that quadrangle of many-windowed walls about him, and he felt Argus eyes upon him everywhere. Behind every curtain somebody seemed to be watching him. The expense of the luxurious hotel was heavy—a dollar a day it cost him, but he could not face boarding-house inquisitiveness. In his office he would sit and brood across his pine table with its green baize cover, and stare at the pine boxes that held his books and the files of his cases tied with red tape. He would dip his quill into the inkstand of gray stone and make careless scratches on the paper before him. When he looked at them afterward they made him wonder if he were going mad. These crazy designs would serve as evidence for his commitment to any asylum. On the margins of his briefs he would wake to find that he had been making crude contours of Patty’s scoop hat, her big eyes, or the nape of her neck. He would blot her out in a fury of rage, and attack his work. The case of Jessamine vs. the City of New York was still hanging fire. Many of the claims of people who were forced to sell their lands for the aqueduct were still unsettled though their farms were covered with stone and trenched with ditches. Yet now RoBards felt that the city had its justice. He had fought for the country and the country had betrayed him. Vile wickedness had found shelter and prosperity in the gentlest seclusions.