He recalled that after the wreck had been cleared up, Mrs. Tresslyn had a
paltry twenty-five thousand a year on which to maintain the house that,
fortuitously, had been in her name at the time of the smash. A paltry sum
indeed! Barely enough to feed and clothe one hundred less exacting
families for a year; families, however, with wheelbarrows instead of
automobiles, and with children instead of servants.

Ten years had elapsed since the death of Arthur Tresslyn, and still the
house in the east Seventies held itself above water by means of that
meagre two thousand a month! These rare, almost priceless objects upon
which he now gazed had weathered the storm, proof against the temptations
that beset an owner embarrassed by their richness; they had maintained a
smug relationship to harmony in spite of the jangling of discordant
instruments, such as writs and attachments and the wails of insufferable
creditors who made the usual mistake of thinking that a man's home is his
castle and therefore an object of reprisal. The splendid porcelains, the
incomparable tapestries and the small but exquisite paintings remained
where they had been placed by the amiable but futile Arthur, and all the
king's men and all the king's horses could not have removed them without
Mrs. Tresslyn's sanction. The mistress of the house subsisted as best she
could on the pitiful income from a sequestered half-million, and lived in
splendour among objects that deluded even the richest and most arrogant of
her friends into believing that nothing was more remote from her
understanding than the word poverty, or the equally disgusting word
thrift.

Here he had come to children's parties in days when he was a lad and Anne
a child of twelve, and here he had always been a welcome visitor and
playmate, even to the end of his college years. The motherless, fatherless
grandson of old Templeton Thorpe was cherished among heirlooms that never