Medora Manson, who, as everybody knew . . . but
then her mother was a Rushworth.

In addition to this forest of family trees, Mr. Sillerton
Jackson carried between his narrow hollow temples,
and under his soft thatch of silver hair, a register of
most of the scandals and mysteries that had smouldered
under the unruffled surface of New York society
within the last fifty years. So far indeed did his
information extend, and so acutely retentive was his
memory, that he was supposed to be the only man who
could have told you who Julius Beaufort, the banker,
really was, and what had become of handsome Bob
Spicer, old Mrs. Manson Mingott's father, who had
disappeared so mysteriously (with a large sum of trust
money) less than a year after his marriage, on the very
day that a beautiful Spanish dancer who had been
delighting thronged audiences in the old Opera-house
on the Battery had taken ship for Cuba. But these
mysteries, and many others, were closely locked in Mr.
Jackson's breast; for not only did his keen sense of
honour forbid his repeating anything privately imparted,
but he was fully aware that his reputation for discretion
increased his opportunities of finding out what he
wanted to know.

The club box, therefore, waited in visible suspense
while Mr. Sillerton Jackson handed back Lawrence
Lefferts's opera-glass. For a moment he silently scrutinised
the attentive group out of his filmy blue eyes