The Harts were to dine at the Elisha Stewarts\' that evening, and the architect had considered this engagement of sufficient importance to bring him back to Chicago all the way from Indianapolis. Elisha Stewart had made his money many years ago, when he commanded a vessel on the lakes, by getting control of valuable ore properties. The Elisha Stewarts had lived in Shoreham for nearly a generation, and were much considered,—very good people, indeed. Their rambling, old-fashioned white house, with a square cupola projecting from the roof, was one of the village landmarks. The place was surrounded by a grove of firs set out by Elisha himself when he built the house.

It was a large dinner, and most of the guests, who were of the older set, were already assembled in the long drawing-room when Helen and Jackson arrived. The people in the room were all talking very earnestly about a common topic.

"It\'s the Crawfords," Mrs. Stewart murmured asthmatically into Helen\'s ear. "You know they find his affairs in such a frightful tangle. They say there won\'t be much left."

"Indeed!" Jackson exclaimed sympathetically.

"Anthony wasn\'t all right, not fit for business for more than a year before he died," Colonel Raymond was saying to the group. "And he snarled things up pretty well by what I hear."

"That slide in copper last March must have squeezed him."

"Squeezed? I should say it did."

"It wasn\'t only copper."

"No, no, it wasn\'t only copper," assented several men.

Among the women, the more personal application of the fact was openly made.

"Poor old Anthony! It must have troubled him to know there wasn\'t one of his family who could look out for himself. Morris was a pleasant fellow, but after he got out of Harvard he never seemed to do much. It will come hard on Linda."

"What has the youngest boy been up to lately?"

"The same thing, I guess."

"I heard he\'d been doing better since he went on the ranch."

"He couldn\'t get into much trouble out there."

"Isn\'t there anything left?"

"Oh, the widow will have a little. But the in-laws will have to hunt jobs. One is out in California, isn\'t he?"

The company did not seem able to get away from the topic. Even after they went out to dinner, it echoed to and fro around the table.

"I say it\'s a shame, a crime!" Mr. Buchanan pronounced with confident earnestness. "A man with that sort of family has no right to engage in speculative enterprises without settling a proper sum on his family first. There\'s his eldest daughter married to an invalid, his youngest daughter engaged to be married to a parson, and neither of his sons showing any business ability."

"That\'s a fact, Oliver," Mr. Stewart nodded. "But you know Anthony always loved deep water."

"And now it\'s his family who have got to swim in it."

"He was a most generous man," Pemberton remarked in a milder tone. "I hardly know of a man who\'s done more first and last for this town, and no one ever had to ask twice for his help in any public enterprise."

"Seems to have looked after other people\'s affairs better\'n his own. It\'s a pity now the boys weren\'t brought up to business."

"That isn\'t the way nowadays. He was always ready for a gamble, and she didn\'t want her sons in the business."

From time to time there were feeble efforts to move the talk out of the rut in which it had become fixed. But the minds of most of those about the table were fascinated by the spectacle of ruin so closely presented to them. The picture of a solid, worldly estate crumbling before their eyes stirred their deepest emotions. For the moment it crowded out that other great topic of the new strike in the building trades. Every one at the table held substantially the same views on both these matters, but the ruin of the Crawford fortune was more immediately dramatic than the evils of unionism.

"When are you fellows going to start that school, Pemberton?" some one asked at last.

"Not until these strikes let up, and there\'s no telling when that will be. If these labor unions only keep on long enough, they will succeed in killing every sort of enterprise."

"Yes, they\'re ruining business."

Then Pemberton, who was seated next to Helen, remarked to her:—

"You will be glad to know, Mrs. Hart, that the trustees have decided not to hand the work over to any institution, at least for the present."

"I am so glad of that," she replied.

"That\'s about as far as we have got."

Sensitively alive to her former blunder in expressing her wish that her husband might draw the plans for the school, she took this as a hint, and dropped the subject altogether, although she had a dozen questions on the tip of her tongue.

She noticed that Jackson, who was seated between Mrs. Stewart and Mrs. Phillips, was drinking a good deal of champagne. She thought that he was finding the dinner as intolerably dull as she found it, for he rarely drank champagne. When the women gathered in the drawing-room for coffee, the topic of the Crawfords\' disaster had reached the anecdotal stage.

"Poor Linda! Do you remember how she hated Chicago? She\'s been living at Cannes this season, hasn\'t she? I suppose she\'ll come straight home now. Does she own that place in the Berkshires?"

"No, everything was in his name."

"He was one of the kind who would keep everything in his own hands."

"Even that ranch doesn\'t belong to Ted, I hear."

"My, what a tragedy it is!"

There seemed to be no end to the talk about the lost money. Helen sat limply in her chair. The leaden dulness of the dinner-talk, the dead propriety and conventionality of the service, the dishes, the guests, had never before so whelmed her spirit as they did to-night. These good people were stung into unusual animation because a man had died leaving his family not poor, but within sight of poverty. For poverty is the deadliest spectre to haunt the merchant class at their lying down and at their uprising.

When the men came in, murmuring among themselves fragments of the same topic, Helen felt as though she might shriek out or laugh hysterically, and as soon as she could she clutched her husband, just as he was sitting down beside Mrs. Pemberton.

"Take me away, Francis. It\'s awful," she whispered.

"What\'s the matter?" he asked in quick concern. "Don\'t you feel well?"

"Yes, yes, I am all right. No, I am tired. My head aches. Can\'t we leave? I shall do something silly—come!"

As they got into their carriage, he demanded, "What was the matter?"

"Nothing,—just the awful dulness of it,—such people,—such talk, talk, talk about poor Mr. Crawford\'s money!"

"I thought the crowd was all right," he grumbled. "The best out here—what was the matter? Your nerves must be wrong."

"Yes, my nerves are wrong," she assented.

Then they were silent, and from the heat, fatigue, and champagne he relapsed into a doze on the way home. But when they reached the house he woke up briskly enough and began to talk of the dinner again:—

"Nell, Mrs. Phillips was speaking to me to-night about Venetia. She\'s worried to death over the girl. The men say pretty rough things about her, you know. Little fool! She\'d better marry Lane if he wants her still, and keep quiet."

"Like mother, like daughter," Helen replied dryly. "And of the two I prefer the daughter."

"What makes you say that? Louise is all right; just likes to have her hand squeezed now and then."

"Phew!" Helen exclaimed impatiently.

There was something so short and hard in his wife\'s voice that Jackson looked at her in surprise. They went to their dressing-room; now that he had got his eyes open once more he made no haste to go to bed. There was something he wanted to say to his wife which needed delicate phrasing. He lit a cigarette and leaned back against the open window, through which the night air was drawing gently. After a little time he remarked:—

"The judge was talking some about the school. They are getting ready to build as soon as the strikes are settled. Has Everett said anything to you about it?"

"Not lately. I haven\'t seen him since we were at the Buchanans\'. Why?"

"Why! I am counting on Everett, and the last time I saw him he seemed to me to be side-stepping. I\'ve seen Pemberton once or twice, but he always avoids the subject. I asked him point-blank to-night what their plans were, and he said the papers had everything that had been settled. He\'s a stiff one! I saw you were talking to him. Did he say anything about the school?"

Helen, who had been moving about the room here and there, preparing to undress, suddenly stood quite still. The memory of her remark to Pemberton that morning on the train swept over her again, coloring her cheeks. She answered the question after a moment of hesitation:—

"Yes, he spoke about their not giving the money to the university, but that was all. And I didn\'t like to ask questions."

"Oh!" Jackson murmured in a disappointed tone. "You might have drawn him out. He\'s likely to have a good deal to say about what is done. The judge is down on me, never liked me since I built for Louise—thinks I stuck her, I suppose. Wasn\'t his money, though. Hollister is on the fence; he\'ll do what Everett tells him. I............