Ruyler sighed. Should he ever enjoy his wife's companionship? And into
what sort of woman would she develop if forced along crooked ways by ugly
secrets, blackmail, perpetual lying and deceit? He longed impatiently for
the decisive interview with Spaulding on the morrow. Then, at least he
could prepare for action, and, after all, even of more importance now
than winning his wife's confidence and saving her from mental anguish,
was the averting of a scandal that would echo across the continent
straight into the ears of his half-reconciled father.
IV
It was about halfway through dinner that the primitive man in him routed
every variety of apprehension that had tormented him since two o'clock
that afternoon.
Trennahan, another distinguished New Yorker, who had made his home in
California for many years, had taken in Mrs. Gwynne, and his Spanish
California wife sat at the foot of the table with the host. Ford had
been given a lively girl, Aileen Lawton, to dissipate the financial
anxieties of the day, and, to Ruyler's satisfaction, Mrs. Thornton had
fallen to his lot and he sat on the left of Isabel. In this little group
at the head of the table, his chosen intimates, who were more interested
in the affairs of the world than in Consummate California, Ruyler had
forgotten his wife for a time and had not noticed with whom she had gone
in to dinner.
But during an interval when Mrs. Thornton's attention had been captured
by the man on her right, and the others drawn into a discussion over
the merits of the new mayor, Price became aware that Doremus sat beside
his wife halfway down the table on the opposite side, and that they
were talking, if not arguing, in a low tone, oblivious for the moment
of the company.
The deferential bend was absent from the neck of the adroit social
explorer, his head was alertly poised above the lovely young matron whose
beauty, wealth, and foreign personality, to say nothing of the importance
of her husband, gave her something of the standing of royalty in the
aristocratic little republic of San Francisco Society. There was a vague
threat in that poise, as if at any moment venom might dart down and
strike that drooping head with its crown of blue-black braids. Suddenly
Helene lifted her eyes, full of appeal, to the round pale blue orbs that
at this moment openly expressed a cold and ruthless mind.
Ruyler endeavored to piece together those disconnected whispers--letters
discovered or stolen--blackmail--but such whispers were too often the
whiffs from energetic but empty minds, always floating about and never
seeming to bring any culprit to book.