She perceived him when he had gained the centre of the second drawing-room. She stood perfectly still, awaiting his approach. There was more than a chill misgiving at her heart lest some inimical hand had sent him her own fatal letter. She did not know how she would act in case he immediately accused her. Hours of sleepless unrest had not supplied her with a single defensive plea.
The new serenity on Hollister's face struck her at a glance. It gave her a sudden relief; it was like a reprieve just before execution. When he said "good morning" she answered him with the same words. She wondered if he had already noticed her pallor, or that a dark line lay under either eye. Her dressing-mirror had told her of these changes.... Might he not guess at sight the guilty agony that she had been enduring?
Her altered looks were not lost upon him. They were a new intercession in her behalf. "I have good news for you," he said, almost tenderly. He went toward the richly-draped mantel just opposite where she stood, and leaned one arm along its edge. He purposely let his eye wander a little, so that she would suspect in him no intentness of scrutiny.
"Good news?" she repeated, softly.
"Yes. I thought it was all up with me, yesterday. But a friend of yours has placed funds at my disposal which will enable me, with wise management, to weather the worst of the storm. He dropped into my office at a very critical moment. He used the nicest delicacy and tact. Before I actually realized that he was offering me very substantial aid, he had done so. And yet, with all his graceful method, he didn't beat about the bush. He was frankly straightforward. He said just why he wished to see my affairs righted—or at least creditably mended. That reason was his deep respect and sincere admiration for you. He told me, with a winning mixture of humor and seriousness, that you represented for him the one great repentance of his bachelorhood. And when I looked at his world-worn sort of face and his decidedly gray locks, and began to wonder whether he meant his amazing proposition in any unpleasant sense, he assured me that he had always seen in you, the daughter whom he had possibly missed being the father of.... Of course you now recognize his portrait; or have I not drawn it clearly enough?"
"Do you mean Beverley Thurston?" asked Claire.
"Yes. You see, now, how generous an act of friendship he performed."
"Yes, I see," Claire murmured.
"The funds he proffered—and which I accepted—are by no means all his own. His influence is so great, his standing is so secure, that he has actually been able to associate four well-known capitalists (one of whom, by the way, chanced to be my personal friend) in carrying out this wonderfully benevolent work." Here Hollister paused for a considerable space. "Of course," he at length went on, "I shall not do more than just escape a positive deadlock. The next few years must be full of cautious living and thinking. I have accepted the burden of a huge debt; but I believe firmly in my power to pay it off. And I have learned a lesson that I shall always profit by. They shall never call me a Wall Street king again. I have seen my last of big ventures. I shall want, if I can manage hereafter when every penny of liabilities shall be settled, to drift slowly but safely into a steady banking channel. I shall have friends enough left on the Street; I shan't have lost caste; I shall still hold my own. At least twenty good men have gone clean down in this flurry, without a chance of ever picking themselves up again. But I am going to pick myself up—that is, thanks to the helping hand of your precious elderly friend; for I could never have done it alone."
Claire knew not what to answer. She was thinking of the sweet, deceitful kindliness that Thurston had employed. She was thinking how little she deserved his timely and inestimable support. She was asking herself whether he would not have shrunk in sorrowful contempt from all such splendid almsgiving if he had known the real truth concerning her recent mad and sinister act.