To business and all its fluctuations and even abnormalities, he had been bred; there was probably no condition possible in the world of finance and commerce which could shatter his self-possession, cloud his mental processes.

But his personal life had been singularly free of storms.

Even his emotional upheaval, when he had fallen completely in love for the first time, had lacked that torment of uncertainty which might have played a certain havoc, for a time, with those quick unalterable decisions of the business hour; and even his engagement had only lasted a month.
It was true that during the past six months he had worried off and on about the shadow that had fallen upon his wife's spirits and affected his own, but, when he had had time to think of it, before yesterday morning, he had assumed it was due to some phase of feminine psychology which he had never mastered.

That she could be interested in another man never had crossed his mind, in spite of his passing flare of jealousy.

She was still passionately in love with, him, for all her vagaries--or so he had thought-- Ruyler was conscious of a riotous confusion of mind that really made him apprehensive.