Wharton, millionaire and septuagenarian. For two years he had been husband
to one of the prettiest, gayest young women in the city, and in the latter
days of this responsibility he was not a happy man. His wife had fallen
desperately, even conspicuously, in love with Everett Havens, the new
leading man at one of the fashionable playhouses. The affair had been
going on for weeks, and it had at last become the talk of the town. By
"the town" is meant that vague, expansive thing known as the "Four
Hundred." Sam Rossiter, two years out of Yale, was an attachment to, but
not a component part of, the Four Hundred. The Whartons were of the inner
circle.

Young Rossiter was ambitious. He was, besides, keen, aggressive, and
determined to make well for himself. Entering the great law offices of
Grover & Dickhut immediately after leaving college, he devoted himself
assiduously to the career in prospect. He began by making its foundation
as substantial as brains and energy would permit. So earnest, so
successful was he that Grover & Dickhut regarded him as the most promising
young man in New York. They predicted a great future for him, no small
part of which was the ultimate alteration of an office shingle, the name
of Rossiter going up in gilt, after that of Dickhut. And, above all,
Rossiter was a handsome, likable chap. Tall, fair, sunny-hearted, well
groomed, he was a fellow that both sexes liked without much effort.

The Wharton trouble was bound to prove startling any way one looked at
it. The prominence of the family, the baldness of its skeleton, and the
gleeful eagerness with which it danced into full view left but little for
meddlers to covet. A crash was inevitable; it was the _clash_ that
Grover & Dickhut were trying to avert. Old Wharton, worn to a slimmer
frazzle than he had ever been before his luckless marriage, was determined
to divorce his insolent younger half. It was to be done with as little