"Mrs. Wentworth--not Louise--I mean the elder Mrs. Wentworth--was speaking of you. You and Norman were great friends when you were boys, she tells me. They were great friends of ours, you know, long before we met you."
He wondered how much the Wentworths' indorsement counted for in securing Mrs. Yorke's invitation. For a good deal, he knew; but as much credit as he gave it he was within the mark.
It was only her environment. She could no more escape from that than if she were in prison. She gauged every one by what others thought, and she possessed no other gauge. Yet there was a certain friendliness, too, in Mrs. Yorke. The good lady had softened with the years, and at heart she had always liked Keith.
Most of her conversation was of her friends and their position. Alice was thinking of going abroad soon to visit some friends on the other side, "of a very distinguished family," she told Keith.
When Keith left the Lancaster house that night Alice Lancaster knew that he had wholly recovered.
CHAPTER XIX
WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY
Keith returned home and soon found himself a much bigger man in New Leeds than when he went away. The mine opened on the Rawson property began to give from the first large promises of success.
Keith picked up a newspaper one day a little later. It announced in large head-lines, as befitted the chronicling of such an event, the death of Mr. William Lancaster, capitalist. He had died suddenly in his office. His wife, it was stated, was in Europe and had been cabled the sad intelligence. There was a sketch of his life and also of that of his wife. Their marriage, it was recalled, had been one of the "romances" of the season a few years before. He had taken society by surprise by carrying off one of the belles of the season, the beautiful Miss Yorke. The rest of the notice was taken up in conjectures as to the amount of his property and the sums he would be likely to leave to the various charitable institutions of which he had always been a liberal patron.