She drew her knees up under the coverlet and buried her face in her hands. For a long moment neither spoke.
Suddenly she looked up, white as the pillows about her.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“In his room, madam—madam will permit me to tell her that it is better madam does not go there at once.”
Griggs withdrew, closed the bedroom door, and rang for Marie. To that now hysterical girl, gasping out her mon Dieu’s! he repeated again briefly what had happened, commanding her to be calm. “Calm as your mistress, do you hear?”
As Marie tremblingly started to enter the bedroom Rose Van Cortlandt opened the door in her dressing-gown. She stood straight, her lungs filled with a deep breath.
“Ah! mon Dieu!” sobbed Marie afresh.
“Go to your room,” said her mistress, “and wait there until I call you.” Then she made her way to his door, to gaze at him whom she had held in high esteem.
The news of Sam Van Cortlandt’s failure and suicide flashed through New York, was galloped up-town in special editions, greasy wet from the press, was bawled out by newsboys, was discussed in clubs and bedrooms, in boudoirs, in street-cars, at dinners and theatre-parties, for all of a day, and subsided the next into stale news, the long sensational columns contracting to short biographies of his financial career, and a photograph taken of him several years previous, re-touched with Chinese white. The following day the press contented itself with a paid announcement of his funeral. The least surprised of all was Wall Street. Friends of his had long ago warned him that his system of speculation was suicidal. They were right.