"And you promised me!" she exclaimed passionately. "I trusted you, I
never believed--"
Price retreated hurriedly to his own room, and it was not until he
had taken a cold shower and was half dressed that he permitted
himself to think.
That wretch had known, then! It was she who had been blackmailing her
daughter. And the poor child had been afraid to confide in him, to ask
him for money. No wonder her eyes had flashed at the prospect of a
fortune of her own....
An even less welcome ray illuminated his mind at this point. His wife was
not unversed in the arts of dissimulation herself. True, she was French
and took naturally to diplomatic wiles; true, also, the instinct of
self-preservation in even younger members of a sex that man in his
centuries of power had made, superficially, the weaker, was rarely inert.
What woman would wish her husband to know disgraceful ancestral secrets
which were no fault of hers? A much older woman would not be above
entombing them, if the fates were kind. But it saddened him to think that
his wife should be rushed to maturity along the devious way. Poor child,
he must win her confidence as quickly as his limping wits would permit
and shift her burden to his own shoulders.
Having learned through the medium of the house telephone that his
mother-in-law had departed, he knocked at his wife's door. She opened it
at once and there was no mark of agitation on her little oval face under
its proudly carried crown of heavy braids. She was looking very lovely in
a severe black velvet gown whose texture and depth cunningly matched her
eyes and threw into a relief as artful the white purity of her skin and
the delicate pink of lip and cheek.
She smiled at him brilliantly. "It can't be true that you are
going with me?"
"I've reformed. I shall go with you everywhere from this time forth. But
I thought I heard your mother's voice when I came in--"
"She often comes in about dressing time to see me in a new frock. How
heavenly that you will always go with me." Her voice shook a little and
she leaned over to smooth a possible wrinkle in her girdle.
"Will you come down to the library? We are rather early."
He went directly to the safe and took out the ruby and clasped the chain
about her neck. The chain was long and the great jewel took a deeper and
more mysterious color from the somber background of her bodice.