The cab which picked Maitland up at his lodgings carried him but a few
blocks to the club at which he had, the previous evening, entertained his
lawyer. Maitland had selected it as the one of all the clubs of which he
and Bannerman were members, wherein he was least likely to meet the latter.
Neither frequented its sober precincts by habit. Its severe and classical
building on a corner of Madison Avenue overlooking the Square, is but the
outward presentment of an institution to be a member of which is a duty,
but emphatically no great pleasure, to the sons of a New York family of any
prominence.

But in its management the younger generation holds no suffrage; and is not
slow to declare that the Primordial is rightly named, characterizing the
individual members of the Board of Governors as antediluvians, prehistoric
monsters who have never learned that laughter lends a savor to existence.
And so it is that the younger generation, (which is understood to include
Maitland and Bannerman), while it religiously pays its dues and has
the name of the Primordial engraved upon its cards, shuns those deadly
respectable rooms and seeks its comfort elsewhere.

Maitland found it dull and depressing enough, that same evening, something
before seven. The spacious and impressive lounging-rooms were but sparsely
tenanted, other than by the ennuied corps of servants; and the few members
who had lent the open doors the excuse of their presence were of the
elderly type that hides itself behind a newspaper in an easy chair and
snorts when addressed.

The young man strolled disconsolately enough into the billiard-room, thence
(dogged by a specter of loneliness) to the bar, and finally, in sheer
desperation, to the dining-room, where he selected a table and ordered an