Chapter IX - Page 2

to touch him for?" He wished he would show his hand and dissipate the damnable web of mystery which Fate seemed weaving hourly out of her bloated pouch, but he doubted if Bisbee, or whoever it was that tormented his wife, would approach him save as a last resource. They were clever enough to know that her keenest desire would be to keep the disgraceful past from the knowledge of her husband, rather than from a society seasoned these many years to erubescent pasts.

Moreover it is always easier to blackmail a woman than a man, and Price Ruyler could not have looked an easy mark to the most optimistic of social brigands.

He found it impossible to fix his mind on the play; the cues of the first act eluded him, and the characters and dialogue were too commonplace to make the story negligible.

At the end of the second act Ruyler made up his mind to go home and try to coax his wife back into her customary good temper, pet her and make her forget her little tragedy. He still hesitated to broach the subject to her directly, but it was possible that by some diplomatically analogous tale he could surprise her into telling him the truth.

During the long drive he turned over in his mind the data Spaulding had placed before him during the afternoon. He rejected the theory that Madame Delano was Mrs. Lawton as utterly fantastic, but admitted a connection. Helene had spoken more than once of Mrs. Lawton's kindness to "maman" when her baby was born during her "enforced stay in San Francisco," and it was quite possible that the two had been friends, and that the young mother had adopted the name of Dubois when calling upon the nuns of the convent at St. Peter, either because it would naturally occur to her, or from some deeper design which, he could not fathom....

Yes, the connection with Mrs. Lawton was indisputable and it remained for him to "figger out" as Spaulding would say, which of these women, the gambler's wife, the notorious "Madam," Gabrielle, the briefly coruscating Pauline Marie, or the Englishman's mistress, a woman of Mrs. Lawton's position would be most likely to befriend.

The first three might be dismissed without argument. She had been no frequenter of "gambling joints" whatever her peccadilloes; Gabrielle, he happened to know, had died some eight or ten years ago, and Mademoiselle Pauline Marie, if she had had a child, which was extremely doubtful, was the sort that sends unwelcome offspring post haste to the foundling asylum.

There remained only the spurious Mrs. Medford, and she was the probability on all counts. What more likely than that she and Mrs. Lawton had met at one of the great winter hotels in Southern California, and foregathered? Certainly they would be congenial spirits.

When the baby came Mrs. Lawton would naturally see her through her trouble, and advise her later what to do with the