For all his mental turmoil he realized that here alone was the only

possible menace to his life's happiness. His mother-in-law's past was a

bitter pill for a proud man to swallow, and there was even the

possibility of his wife's illegitimacy, but, after all, those were

matters belonging to the past, and the past quickly receded to limbo

these days.

Even an open scandal, if some one of the offal sheets of San Francisco

got hold of the story and published it, would be forgotten in time. But

this--if his wife had fallen in love with another man--and women had no

discrimination where love was concerned--(if a decent chap got a lovely

girl it was mainly by luck; the rotters got just as good)--then indeed he

was in the midst of disaster without end. The present was chaos and the

future a blank. He'd enlist in the first war and get himself shot....

Helene had a charming light coquetry, wholly French, and she exercised it

indiscriminately, much to the delight of the old beaux, for she loved to

please, to be admired; she had an innocent desire that all men should

think her quite beautiful and irresistible. Even her husband had never

seen her in an unbecoming deshabille; she coquetted with him

shamelessly, whenever she was not too gloriously serious and intent only

upon making him happy. Until lately-This was by no means her ordinary form.

He had come upon too many couples in remote corners of conservatories,

had been a not unaccomplished principal in his own day ... there was,

beyond question, some deep understanding between her and this man.

Suddenly Ruyler's gaze burned through to his wife's consciousness. She

moved her eyes to his, flushed to her hair, then for a moment looked

almost gray. But she recovered herself immediately and further showed her

remarkable powers of self-possession by turning back to her partner and

talking to him with animation instead of plunging into conversation with

the man on her right.

At the same moment Ruyler became subtly aware that Mrs. Thornton was

looking at his wife and Doremus, and as his eyes focused he saw her long,

thin, mobile mouth curl and her eyes fill with open disdain. The mist in

his brain fled as abruptly as an inland fog out in the bay before one of

the sudden winds of the Pacific. In any case, his mind hardly could have

remained in a state of confusion for long; but that his young wife was

being openly contemned by the cleverest as well as the most powerful

woman in San Francisco was enough to restore his equilibrium in a flash.

Whatever his wife's indiscretions, it was his business to protect her

until such time as he had proof of more than indiscretion. And in this

instance he should be his own detective.




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