And e’en in crowds, I’m still alone,
Because—I cannot love—but one.”
John Dinsmore experienced quite a change of climate when he reached New York from that which he had just left behind him in the sunny South. A violent snowstorm was raging, and it was bitter cold.
Busy as the streets of the great metropolis always were there seemed to be more than the usual throng surging to and fro, and then John Dinsmore remembered what he came very near forgetting, that it was Thanksgiving Eve.
How happy were the faces of all who passed him, as though there were no such things in the world as sorrow, desolation, and heartaches. He smiled a bitter smile, telling himself that he had little enough to give thanks for, in the way of happiness. He hesitated a moment on the corner of Broadway, wondering if it were best to go to a hotel, or to the room of his old friends, Jerry Gaines and Ballou.
“I do not feel equal to seeing and talking with even the Trinity to-night,” he muttered. “They would want an account of all that transpired since I saw them last, and I am not equal to it just yet. How surprised they will be, and pleased to know that I escaped the wreck under which the papers had me buried, and still more pleased to learn that I married the girl that Uncle Dinsmore selected for me; but they will do their best to argue me out of my firm resolve to divorce the girl. But nothing that they can say or do will shake me in my purpose. I will set the girl free in the shortest possible time, that she may wed the man to whom she was engaged when I came upon the scene and married her, never dreaming she was in love with another, and that the reports of my wealth had tempted her to prove false to him. I know but too well what the poor fellow must have suffered.”
Finding himself in the vicinity of the home of the Trevalyns, that is, the address Queenie had given him when they were at Newport, he concluded that there was no time like the present to discharge the unpleasant task. He therefore turned his steps in that direction at once.
A brisk walk of scarcely three minutes brought him to the number he was in search of, No. — Fifth Avenue.
The obsequious servant who answered the summons at the door bowed low to the tall, distinguished-looking gentleman whom he found there.
It was then that John Dinsmore made the fatal mistake of his life. He called for Miss Trevalyn, instead of Mrs. Trevalyn.