The $500 Check — page 288: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SQUIRE MARLOWE IS SURPRISED. 269 tune. Here was the real criminal, as she fully believed—rich, prosperous, enjoying a high social position, while her poor husband, the scapegoat for another’s offense, was an exile from home. The next day Squire Marlowe went to New York on business. He occasionally visited Wall Street, and now and then made an in- vestment. He looked the embodiment of dig- nity and respectability, with his ample figure, fine broadcloth suit, and gold-rimmed eye- glasses, and might readily have been taken for a prosperous and wealthy city banker. About one o’clock he entered an expensive restaurant a stone’s throw from Broadway, and taking up the bill of fare made a selection of dishes for hisdinner. As he did so, he said to himself, with a comfortable smile: ‘‘ When I was a common workman in a shoe shop, how little did I think that I should ever be able to sit down in a restaurant like this, and pay a dollar and a half for my dinner. Why I didn’t earn much more than that by a day’s labor. Here I am surrounded by brokers, bankers, and wealthy merchants, and quite as good as they.”’ Gomichoo cS