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.




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