And as the news of his appointment, in the papers of the day before, had made him a public person, and had been no doubt telegraphed to London and Europe, so also would it be with the news of the "hold-up," and his own connection with it; partly because it had happened on the C.P.R.; still more because of the prominence given to his name the day before.
He felt himself a disgraced man; and he had already put from him all thought of a public career.

Yet he wondered, not without self-contempt, as he lay there in the broadening light, what it was in truth that made the enormous difference between this Monday and the Monday before.

His father was dead, and had died in the very commission of a criminal act.
But all or nearly all that Anderson knew now about his character he had known before this happened.

The details given by the Nevada officers were indeed new to him; but he had shrewdly suspected all along that the record, did he know it, would be something like that.

If such a parentage in itself involves stain and degradation, the stain and degradation had been always there, and the situation, looked at philosophically, was no worse for the catastrophe which had intervened between this week and last.
And yet it was of course immeasurably worse! Such is the "bubble reputation"-- the difference between the known and the unknown.
At nine o'clock a note was brought to his room: "Will you breakfast with me in half an hour?
You will find me alone.
"E.M." Before the clock struck the half-hour, Elizabeth was already waiting for her guest, listening for every sound.