"This sort of thing--in your own caste--among your own kind," his panicky thoughts ran on, "is b-bad form--rotten bad taste on both sides. If they were married--one of them, anyway! But this isn't right; no, by gad! it's bad taste, and no gentleman could countenance it!"
It was plain that he could, however, his only fear being that somebody might whisper something to turn Sylvia's innocence into a terrible wisdom which would ruin everything, and knock the underpinning from the new tower which his inflated fancy beheld slowly growing heavenward, surmounting the house of Belwether.
Another matter: he had violated his word, and had been caught at it by his prospective nephew-in-law--broken his pledged word not to sell his Amalgamated Electric holdings, and had done it. Yet, how could Plank dominate, unless another also had done what he had done? And it made him a little more comfortable to know he was sharing the fault with somebody--probably with Siward, whom he now had the luxury of despising for the very thing he himself had done.
"Drunkard!" he muttered to himself; "he's in the gutter at last!"
And he repeated it unctuously, almost reconciled to his own shortcoming, because it was the first time, as far as he knew, that a Belwether might legitimately enjoy the pleasures of holding the word of a Siward in contempt.
Sylvia had dismissed her maid, the old feeling of distaste for the touch of another had returned since the last mad, crushed embrace in Siward's arms had become a memory. More and more she was returning to old instincts, old habits of thought, reverting to type once more, virgin of lip and thought and desire, save when the old memory stopped her heart suddenly, then sent it racing, touching her face with quick, crimson imprint.
Now, blue eyes dreaming under the bright masses of her loosened hair, she sat watching the last glimmer amid the ashes whitening on the hearth, thinking of Siward and of what had been between them, and of what could never be--never, never be.
One red spark among the ashes--her ambition, deathless amid the ashes of life! When that, too, went out, life must be extinct.
What he had roused in her had died when he went away. It could never awake again, unless he returned to awaken it. And he never would; he would never come again.
One brief interlude of love, of passion, in her life could neither tint nor taint the cool, normal sequence of her days. All that life held for a woman of her caste--all save that--was hers when she stretched out her hand for it--hers by right of succession, of descent; hers by warrant unquestioned, by the unuttered text of the ukase to be launched, if necessary, by that very, very old lady, drowsing, enthroned, as the endless pageant wound like a jewelled river at her feet.