CHAPTER VIII


The superbly dressed visitor, wrapped in silk brocades and woven
feathers, seemed strangely out of place there in the doorway of the
dingy tenement apartment. That she felt herself so, also, was
apparent, for there was, upon her face, a look of high contempt and
keen distaste. She swept into the little room with all the majesty of
a proud queen, forced, by some untoward circumstance, to call at the
low hovel of a very, very humble, and, probably, unworthy subject.

"Ah, Herr Kreutzer."

The old flute-player, after a scared glance into the hallway, where he
had thought he saw the flash of brazen buttons, bowed low and
handsomely. Among all the millionaire male friends of Mrs. Vanderlyn
was not one who was half capable of such a bow, and, in a dim way she
appreciated this. She did not for a moment, though, think it marked
the aged man before her as a gentleman, and worthy, therefore, of
consideration from a lady. She was trying to feel certain, now, that
what she had believed an evidence of really high breeding, was,
really, mere clever sham. The old musician had lost all the glamor of
his mystery for her. Surely, had he really been what she suspected,
then his daughter would have been incapable of the offense which she,
its victim, had come there to punish. Now the old man's courtly grace
upon the ship, by which she had been fooled into believing him a
person of real eminence, was openly revealed to her as counterfeit and
worthless--he was a swindler, almost, indeed, as viciously dishonest