Chapter IV - Page 2

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.

Helene gasped. "Am I to wear it to-night? That would be too wonderful. This is the last great night in town."

"Why not? I shall be there to mount guard. You shall always wear it when I am able to go out with you."

She lifted her radiant face, although it remained subtly immobile with a new and almost formal self-possession. "I am even more delighted than I was yesterday, for at the fete there will be so much novelty to distract attention. You always think of the nicest possible things."

When they were in the taxi he put his arm about her.

"I wonder," he