A Transaction in Hearts by Edgar Saltus — Read

But for that day the rescue was of necessity postponed. Shortly after leaving Bronx the train in which Gonfallon was seated hesitated and halted, barricaded by the derailment of the Boston Express. And there between open fields for four mortal hours Gonfallon sat and twirled his thumbs. Instead of arriving in town at noon, the encroachments of dusk had begun before the station was reached.

As he drove to the rectory he weighed the feasibility of bearding Usselex in his house or of waylaying Manhattan at his club. On Jerolomon no attempt could be made, for that vulture took wing each night to an eyry on the Palisades whither pursuit were futile. The cab moved slowly; a stream of carriages was descending from the Park, and suddenly the rumble of the Avenue was punctuated by a stroke of brass, the trailing cry of a horn, and a coach swept by displaying for a second's space a panorama of high hats, smart bonnets, and grooms the arms folded, impassible, correct. In its wake came a landau, the panel decorated with a coat of arms that was haughtier than a closed crown, and for occupant a brewer's mistress. And behind it, interrupted by drays and hansoms, came traps from the stables of Robinson, of Madden, Dunwoodie, Forbush, and Attersol, men whose signatures could ransom popes, to whose daughters princes offered their hands, not the left either, but both, and whose wives could not find houses large enough for the plenitude and atrocities of their taste.