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The Hollow of Her Hand

by George Barr McCutcheon · English · Gutenberg #6045 · 660,623 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Hollow of Her Hand

Author: George Barr McCutcheon


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6045]
                Most recently updated: April 11, 2013

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLLOW OF HER HAND ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










[Illustration: "The black pile is mine, the gay pile is yours,"
she went on, turning toward the sleeping girl]

THE HOLLOW OF HER HAND

By GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON





CONTENTS




I MARCH COMES IN LIKE THE LION

II THE PASSING OF A NIGHT

III HETTY CASTLETON

IV WHILE THE MOB WAITED

V DISCUSSING A SISTER-IN-LAW

VI SOUTHLOOK

VII A FAITHFUL CRAYON-POINT

VIII IN WHICH HETTY IS WEIGHED

IX HAWKRIGHT'S MODEL

X THE GHOST AT THE FEAST

XI MAN PROPOSES

XII THE APPROACH OF A MAN NAMED SMITH

XIII MR. WRANDALL PERJURES HIMSELF

XIV IN THE SHADOW OF THE MILL

XV SARA WRANDALL FINDS THE TRUTH

XVI THE SECOND ENCOUNTER

XVII CROSSING THE CHANNEL

XVIII RATTLING OLD BONES

XIX VIVIAN AIRS HER OPINIONS

XX ONCE MORE AT BURTON'S INN

XXI DISTURBING NEWS

XXII THE HOLLOW OF HER HAND

XXIII SARA WRANDALL'S DECISION

XXIV THE JURY OF FOUR

XXV RENUNCIATION





CHAPTER I

MARCH COMES IN LIKE THE LION


The train, which had roared through a withering gale of sleet
all the way up from New York, came to a standstill, with many an
ear-splitting sigh, alongside the little station, and a reluctant
porter opened his vestibule door to descend to the snow-swept
platform: a solitary passenger had reached the journey's end. The
swirl of snow and sleet screaming out of the blackness at the end
of the station-building enveloped the porter in an instant, and
cut his ears and neck with stinging force as he turned his back
against the gale. A pair of lonely, half-obscured platform lights
gleamed fatuously at the top of their icy posts at each end of the
station; two or three frost-encrusted windows glowed dully in the
side of the building, while one shone brightly where the operator
sat waiting for the passing of No. 33.

The train itself was dark. Frosty windows, pelted for miles by the
furious gale, white outside but black within, protected the snug
travellers who slept the sleep of the hurried and thought not of
the storm that beat about their ears nor wondered at the stopping
of the fast express at a place where it had never stopped before.
Far ahead the panting engine shed from its open fire-box an aureole
of glaring red as the stoker fed coal into its rapacious maw. The
unblinking head-light threw its rays into the thick of the blinding
snow storm, fruitlessly searching for the rails through drifts
denser than fog and filled with strange, half-visible shapes.

An order had been issued for the stopping of the fast express at
B--, a noteworthy concession in these days of premeditated haste.
Not in the previous career of flying 33 had it even so much as
slowed down for the insignificant little station, through which it
swooped at midnight the whole year round. Just before pulling out
of New York on this eventful night the conductor received a command
to stop 33 at B---- and let down a single passenger, a circumstance
which meant trouble for every despatcher along the line.

The woman who got down at B---- in the wake of the shivering
but deferential porter, and who passed by the conductors without
lifting her face, was without hand luggage of any description.
She was heavily veiled, and warmly clad in furs. At eleven o'clock
that night she had entered the compartment in New York. Throughout
the thirty miles or more, she had sat alone and inert beside the
snow-clogged window, peering through veil and frost into the night
that whizzed past the pane, seeing nothing yet apparently intent
on all that stretched beyond. As still, as immobile as death itself
she had held herself from the moment of departure to the instant
that brought the porter with the word that they were whistling for
B---.  Without a word she arose and followed him to the vestibule,
where she watched him as he unfastened the outer door and lifted
the trap.  A single word escaped her lips and he held out his hand
to receive the crumpled bill she clutched in her gloved fingers.
He did not look at it. He knew that it would amply reward him for
the brief exposure he endured on the lonely, wind-swept platform
of a station, the name of which he did not know.

She took several uncertain steps in the direction of the station
windows and stopped, as if bewildered. Already the engine was
pounding the air with quick, vicious snorts in the effort to get
under way; the vestibule trap and door closed with a bang; the
wheels were creaking. A bitter wind smote her in the face; the wet,
hurtling sleet crashed against the thin veil, blinding her.

The door of the waiting-room across the platform opened and a man
rushed toward her.

"Mrs. Wrandall?" he called above the roar of the wind.

She advanced quickly.

"Yes."

"What a night!" he said, as much to himself as to her. "I'm sorry
you would insist on coming to-night. To-morrow morning would have
satisfied the--"

"Is this Mr. Drake?"

They were being blown through the door into the waiting-room as
she put the question. Her voice was muffled. The man in the great
fur coat put his weight against the door to close it.

"Yes, Mrs. Wrandall. I have done all that could be done under the
circumstances. I am sorry to tell you that we still have two miles
to go by motor before we reach the inn. My car is open,--I don't
possess a limousine,--but if you will lie down in the tonneau you
will find some protection from--"

She broke in sharply, impatiently. "Pray do not consider me, Mr.
Drake. I am not afraid of the blizzard."

"Then we'd better be off," said he, a note of anxiety in his
voice,--a certain touch of nervousness. "I drive my own car. The
road is good, but I shall drive cautiously. Ten minutes, perhaps.
I--I am sorry you thought best to brave this wretched--"

"I am not sorry for myself, Mr. Drake, but for you. You have been
most kind. I did not expect you to meet me."

"I took the liberty of telephoning to you. It was well that I
did it early in the evening. The wires are down now, I fear." He
hesitated for a moment, staring at her as if trying to penetrate
the thick, wet veil. "I may have brought you on a fool's errand.
You see, I--I have seen Mr. Wrandall but once, in town somewhere,
and I may be wrong. Still, the coroner,--and the sheriff,--seemed
to think you should be notified,--I might say questioned. That is
why I called you up. I trust, madam, that I am mistaken."

"Yes," she said shrilly, betraying the intensity of her emotion.
It was as if she lacked the power to utter more than a single word,
which signified neither acquiescence nor approval.

He was ill-at-ease, distressed. "I have engaged a room for you at
the inn, Mrs. Wrandall. You did not bring a maid, I see. My wife
will come over from our place to stay with you if you--"

She shook her head. "Thank you, Mr. Drake. It will not be necessary.
I came alone by choice. I shall return to New York to-night."

"But you--why, you can't do that," he cried, holding back as they
started toward the door. "No trains stop here after ten o'clock.
The locals begin running at seven in the morning. Besides--"

She interrupted him. "May we not start now, Mr. Drake? I am--well,
you must see that I am suffering. I must see, I must know. The
suspense--" She did not complete the sentence, but hurried past
him to the door, throwing it open and bending her body to the gust
that burst in upon them.

He sprang after her, grasping her arm to lead her across the icy
platform to the automobile that stood in the lee of the building.

Disdaining his command to enter the tonneau, she stood beside the
car and waited until he cranked it and took his place at the wheel.
Then she took her seat beside him and permitted him to tuck the
great buffalo robe about her. No word was spoken. The man was a
stranger to her. She forgot his presence in the car.

Into the thick of the storm the motor chugged. Grim and silent,
the man at the wheel, ungoggled and tense, sent the whirring thing
swiftly over the trackless village street and out upon the open
country road. The woman closed her eyes and waited.

You would know the month was March. He said: "It comes in like a
lion," but apparently the storm swallowed the words for she made
no response to them.

They crossed the valley and crept up the tree-covered hill, where
the force of the gale was broken. If she heard him say: "Fierce,
wasn't it?" she gave no sign, but sat hunched forward, peering ahead
through the snow at the blurred lights that seemed so far away and
yet were close at hand.

"Is that the inn?" she asked as he swerved from the road a few
moments later.

"Yes, Mrs. Wrandall. We're here."

"Is--is he in there?"

"Where you see that lighted window upstairs." He tooted the horn
vigorously as he drew up to the long, low porch. Two men dashed
out from the doorway and clumsily assisted her from the car.

"Go right in, Mrs. Wrandall," said Drake. "I join you in a jiffy."

She walked between the two men into the feebly lighted office
of the inn. The keeper of the place, a dreary looking person with
dread in his eyes, hurried forward. She stopped stock-still. Some
one was brushing the stubborn, thickly caked snow from her long
chinchilla coat.

"You must let me get you something hot to drink, madam," the landlord
was saying dolorously.

She struggled with her veil, finally tearing it away from her face.
Then she took in the rather bare, cheerless room with a slow,
puzzled sweep of her eyes.

"No, thank you," she replied.

"It won't be any trouble, madam," urged the other. "It's right here.
The sheriff says it's all right to serve it, although it is after
hours. I run a respectable, law-abiding house. I wouldn't think of
offering it to anyone if it was in violation--"

"Never mind, Burton," interposed a big man, approaching. "Let the
lady choose for herself. If she wants it, she'll say so. I am the
sheriff, madam. This gentleman is the coroner, Dr. Sheef. We waited
up for you after Mr. Drake said you'd got the fast train to stop
for you. To-morrow morning would have done quite as well. I'm sorry
you came to-night in all this blizzard."

He was staring as if fascinated at the white, colourless face of
the woman who with nervous fingers unfastened the heavy coat that
enveloped her slender figure. She was young and strikingly beautiful,
despite the intense pallor that overspread her face. Her dark,
questioning, dreading eyes looked up into his with an expression
he was never to forget. It combined dread, horror, doubt and a
smouldering anger that seemed to overcast all other emotions that
lay revealed to him.

"This is a--what is commonly called a 'road-house'?" she asked
dully, her eyes narrowing suddenly as if in pain.

The inn-keeper made haste to resent the implied criticism.

"My place is a respectable, law-abiding--"

The sheriff waved him aside.

"It is an inn during the winter, Mrs. Wrandall, and a road-house
in the summer, if that makes it plain to you. I will say, however,
that Burton has always kept well within the law. This is the
first--er--real bit of trouble he's had, and I won't say it's his
fault. Keep quiet, Burton. No one is accusing you of anything wrong.
Don't whine about it."

"But my place is ruined," groaned the doleful one. "It's got a
black eye now. Not that I blame you, madam, but you can see how--"

He quailed before the steady look in her eyes, and turned away
mumbling.

There were half a dozen men in the room, besides the speakers,
sober-faced fellows who conversed in undertones and studiously kept
their backs to the woman who had just come among them. They were
grouped about the roaring fireplace in the lower end of the room.
Steam arose from their heavy winters garments. Their caps were
still drawn far down over their ears. These were men who had been
out in the night.

"There is a fire in the reception-room, madam," said the coroner;
"and the proprietor's wife to look out for you if you should require
anything. Will you go in there and compose yourself before going
upstairs? Or, if you would prefer waiting until morning, I shall
not insist on the--er--ordeal to-night."

"I prefer going up there to-night," said she steadily.

The men looked at each other, and the sheriff spoke. "Mr. Drake is
quite confident the--the man is your husband. It's an ugly affair,
Mrs. Wrandall. We had no means of identifying him until Drake came
in this evening, out of curiosity you might say. For your sake, I
hope he is mistaken."

"Would you mind telling me something about it before I go upstairs?
I am quite calm. I am prepared for anything. You need not hesitate."

"As you wish, madam. You will go into the reception-room, if you
please. Burton, is Mrs. Wrandall's room quite ready for her?"

"I shall not stay here to-night," interposed Mrs. Wrandall. "You
need not keep the room for me."

"But, my dear Mrs. Wrandall--"

"I shall wait in the railway station until morning if necessary.
But not here."

The coroner led the way to the cosy little room off the office.
She followed with the sheriff. The men looked worn and haggard in
the bright light that met them, as if they had not known sleep or
rest for many hours.

"The assistant district attorney was here until eleven, but went
home to get a little rest. It's been a hard case for all of us--a
nasty one," explained the sheriff, as he placed a chair in front
of the fire for her. She sank into it limply.

"Go on, please," she murmured, and shook her head at the nervous
little woman who bustled up and inquired if she could do anything
to make her more comfortable.

The sheriff cleared his throat. "Well, it happened last night. All
day long we've been trying to find out who he is, and ever since
eight o'clock this morning we've been searching for the woman who
came here with him. She has disappeared as completely as if swallowed
by the earth. Not a sign of a clew---not a shred. There's nothing
to show when she left the inn or by what means. All we know is that
the door to that room up there was standing half open when Burton
passed by it at seven o'clock this morning---that is to say, yesterday
morning, for this is now Wednesday. It is quite clear, from this,
that she neglected to close the door tightly when she came out,
probably through haste or fear, and the draft in the hall blew it
wider open during the night. Burton says the inn was closed for
the night at half-past ten. He went to bed. She must have slipped
out after every one was sound asleep. There were no other guests
on that floor. Burton and his wife sleep on this floor, and the
servants are at the top of the house and in a wing. No one heard
a sound. We have not the remotest idea when the thing happened, or
when she left the place. Dr. Sheef says the man had been dead for
six or eight hours when he first saw him, and that was very soon
after Burton's discovery. Burton, on finding the door open, naturally
suspected that his guests had skipped out during the night to avoid
paying the bill, and lost no time in entering the room.

"He found the man lying on the bed, sprawled out, face upward and
as dead as a mack--I should say, quite dead. He was partly dressed.
His coat and vest hung over the back of a chair. A small service
carving knife, belonging to the inn, had been driven squarely into
his heart and was found sticking there. Burton says that the man,
on their arrival at the inn, about nine o'clock at night, ordered
supper sent up to the room. The tray of dishes, with most of the food
untouched, and an empty champagne bottle, was found on the service
table near the bed. One of the chairs was overturned. The servant
who took the meal to the room says that the woman was sitting at
the window with her wraps on, motor veil and all, just as she was
when she came into the place. The man gave all the directions,
the woman apparently paying no attention to what was going on. The
waitress left the room without seeing her face. She had instructions
not to come for the tray until morning.

"That was the last time the man was seen alive. No one has seen
the woman since the door closed after the servant, who distinctly
remembers hearing the key turn in the lock as she went down the
hall. It seems pretty clear that the man ate and drank but not the
woman. Her food remained untouched on the plate and her glass was
full. 'Gad, it must have been a merry feast! I beg your pardon,
Mrs.  Wrandall!"

"Go on, please," said she levelly.

"That's all there is to say so far as the actual crime is concerned.
There were signs of a struggle,--but it isn't necessary to go into
that. Now, as to their arrival at the inn. The blizzard had not
set in. Last night was dark, of course, as there is no moon, but
it was clear and rather warm for the time of year. The couple came
here about nine o'clock in a high power runabout machine, which
the man drove. They had no hand-baggage and apparently had run out
from New York. Burton says he was on the point of refusing them
accommodations when the man handed him a hundred dollar bill.
It was more than Burton's cupidity could withstand. They did not
register.  The state license numbers had been removed from the
automobile, which was of foreign make. Of course, it was only a
question of time until we could have found out who the car belonged
to. It is perfectly obvious why he removed the numbers."

At this juncture Drake entered the room. Mrs. Wrandall did not at
first recognise him.

"It has stopped snowing," announced the new-comer.

"Oh, it is Mr. Drake," she murmured. "We have a little French car,
painted red," she announced to the sheriff without giving Drake
another thought.

"And this one is red, madam," said the sheriff, with a glance at
the coroner. Drake nodded his head. Mrs. Wrandall's body stiffened
perceptibly, as if deflecting a blow. "It is still standing in the
garage, where he left it on his arrival."

"Did no one see the face of--of the woman?" asked Mrs. Wrandall,
rather querulously. "It seems odd that no one should have seen her
face," she went on without waiting for an answer.

"It's not strange, madam, when you consider ALL the circumstances.
She was very careful not to remove her veil or her coat until the
door was locked. That proves that she was not the sort of woman
we usually find gallavanting around with men regardless of--ahem,
I beg your pardon. This must be very distressing to you."

"I am not sure, Mr. Sheriff, that it IS my husband who lies up
there. Please remember that," she said steadily. "It is easier to
hear the details now, before I KNOW, than it will be afterward if
it should turn out to be as Mr. Drake declares."

"I see," said the sheriff, marvelling.

"Besides, Mr. Drake is not POSITIVE," put in the coroner hopefully.

"I am reasonably certain," said Drake.

"Then all the more reason why I should have the story first," said
she, with a shiver that no one failed to observe.

The sheriff resumed his conclusions. "Women of the kind I referred
to a moment ago don't care whether they're seen or not. In fact,
they're rather brazen about it. But this one was different. She
was as far from that as it was possible for her to be. We haven't
been able to find any one who saw her face or who can give the least
idea as to what she looks like, excepting a general description of
her figure, her carriage, and the out-door garments she wore. We
have reason to believe she was young. She was modestly dressed. Her
coat was one of those heavy ulster affairs, such as a woman uses
in motoring or on a sea-voyage. There was a small sable stole about
her neck. The skirt was short, and she wore high black shoes of
the thick walking type. Judging from Burton's description she must
have been about your size and figure, Mrs. Wrandall. Isn't that
so, Mrs.  Burton?"

The inn-keeper's wife spoke. "Yes, Mr. Harben, I'd say so myself.
About five feet six, I'd judge; rather slim and graceful-like, in
spite of the big coat."

Mrs. Wrandall was watching the woman's face. "I am five feet six,"
she said, as if answering a question.

The sheriff cleared his throat somewhat needlessly.

"Burton says she acted as if she were a lady," he went on. "Not the
kind that usually comes out here on such expeditions, he admits.
She did not speak to any one, except once in very low tones to the
man she was with, and then she was standing by the fireplace out in
the main office, quite a distance from the desk. She went upstairs
alone, and he gave some orders to Burton before following her.
That was the last time Burton saw her. The waitress went up with
a specially prepared supper about half an hour later."

"It seems quite clear, Mrs. Wrandall, that she robbed the man after
stabbing him," said the coroner.

Mrs. Wrandall started. "Then she was NOT a lady, after all," she
said quickly. There was a note of relief in her voice. It was as
if she had put aside a half-formed conclusion.

"His pockets were empty. Not a penny had been left. Watch, cuff-links,
scarf pin, cigarette case, purse and bill folder,--all gone. Burton
had seen most of these articles in the office."

"Isn't it--but no! Why should I be the one to offer a suggestion
that might be construed as a defence for this woman?"

"You were about to suggest, madam, that some one else might have
taken the valuables--is that it?" cried the sheriff.

"Had you thought of it, Mr. Sheriff?"

"I had not. It isn't reasonable. No one about this place is suspected.
We have thought of this, however: the murderess may have taken
all of these things away with her in order to prevent immediate
identification of her victim. She may have been clever enough for
that. It would give her a start."

"Not an unreasonable conclusion, when you stop to consider, Mr.
Sheriff, that the man took the initiative in that very particular,"
said Mrs. Wrandall in such a self-contained way that the three men
looked at her in wonder. Then she came abruptly to her feet. "It
is very late, gentlemen. I am ready to go upstairs, Mr. Sheriff."

"I must warn you, madam, that Mr. Drake is reasonably certain that
it is your husband," said the coroner uncomfortably. "You may not
be prepared for the shock that--"

"I shall not faint, Dr. Sheef. If it IS my husband I shall ask you
to leave me alone in the room with him for a little while." The
final word trailed out into a long, tremulous wail, showing how near
she was to the breaking point in her wonderful effort at self-control.
The men looked away hastily. They heard her draw two or three deep,
quavering breaths; they could almost feel the tension that she was
exercising over herself.

The doctor turned after a moment and spoke very gently, but with
professional firmness. "You must not think of venturing out in this
wretched night, madam. It would be the worst kind of folly. Surely
you will be guided by me--by your own common sense. Mrs. Burton
will be with you--"

"Thank you, Dr. Sheef," she interposed calmly. "If what we all fear
should turn out to be the truth, I could not stay here. I could
not breathe. I could not live. If, on the other hand, Mr. Drake is
mistaken, I shall stay. But if it is my husband, I cannot remain
under the same roof with him, even though he be dead. I do not
expect you to understand my feelings. It would be asking too much
of men,--too much."

"I think I understand," murmured Drake.

"Come," said the sheriff, arousing himself with an effort.

She moved swiftly after him. Drake and the coroner, following
close behind with Mrs. Burton, could not take their eyes from the
slender, graceful figure. She was a revelation to them. Feeling as
they did that she was about to be confronted by the most appalling
crisis imaginable, they could not but marvel at her composure.
Drake's mind dwelt on the stories of the guillotine and the heroines
who went up to it in those bloody days without so much as a quiver
of dread.  Somehow, to him, this woman was a heroine.

They passed into the hall and mounted the stairs. At the far end
of the corridor, a man was seated in front of a closed door. He
arose as the party approached. The sheriff signed for him to open
the door he guarded. As he did so, a chilly blast of air blew upon
the faces of those in the hall. The curtains in the window of the
room were flapping and whipping in the wind. Mrs. Wrandall caught
her breath.  For the briefest instant, it seemed as though she was
on the point of faltering. She dropped farther behind the sheriff,
her limbs suddenly stiff, her hand going out to the wall as if for
support.  The next moment she was moving forward resolutely into
the icy, dimly lighted room.

A single electric light gleamed in the corner beside the bureau.
Near the window stood the bed. She went swiftly toward it, her
eyes fastened upon the ridge that ran through the centre of it: a
still, white ridge that seemed without beginning or end.

With nervous fingers, the attendant lifted the sheet at the head
of the bed and turned it back. As he let it fall across the chest
of the dead man, he drew back and turned his face away.

She bent forward and then straightened her figure to its full
height, without for an instant removing her gaze from the face of
the man who lay before her: a dark-haired man grey in death, who
must have been beautiful to look upon in the flush of life.

For a long time she stood there looking, as motionless as the object
on which she gazed. Behind her were the tense, keen-eyed men, not
one of whom seemed to breathe during the grim minutes that passed.
The wind howled about the corners of the inn, but no one heard it.
They heard the beating of their hearts, even the ticking of their
watches, but not the wail of the wind.

At last her hands, claw-like in their tenseness, went slowly to
her temples. Her head drooped slightly forward, and a great shudder
ran through her body. The coroner started forward, expecting her
to collapse.

"Please go away," she was saying in an absolutely emotionless voice.
"Let me stay here alone for a little while."

That was all. The men relaxed. They looked at each other with a
single question in their eyes. Was it quite safe to leave her alone
with her dead? They hesitated.

She turned on them suddenly, spreading her arms in a wide gesture
of self-absolution. Her sombre eyes swept the group.

"I can do no harm. This man is mine. I want to look at him for the
last time--alone. Will you go?"

"Do you mean, madam, that you intend to--" began the coroner in
alarm.

She clasped her hands. "I mean that I shall take my last look at
him now--and here. Then you may do what you like with him. He is
your dead--not mine. I do not want him. Can you understand? _I_ DO
NOT WANT THIS DEAD THING. But there is something I would say to
him, something that I must say. Something that no one must hear
but the good God who knows how much he has hurt me. I want to say
it close to those grey, horrid ears. Who knows? He may hear me!"

Wondering, the others backed from the room. She watched them until
they closed the door.

Listening, they heard her lower the window. It squealed like a
thing in fear.

Ten minutes passed. The group in the hall conversed in whispers.

"Why did she put the window down?" asked the wife of the inn-keeper,
crossing herself.

Drake shook his head. "I wonder what she is saying to him," he
muttered.

"A wonderful nerve," said Dr. Sheef. "Positively wonderful. I've
never seen anything like it."

"Her own husband, too," said Mrs. Burton. "Why, I--I should have
said she'd go into hysterics. Such a handsome man he was."

"I guess, from what I've heard of this fellow, Wrandall, he's not
been an angel," volunteered the sheriff.

Drake shook his head once more.

"He ain't one now, I'll bet on that," said the man who stood guard.
"He's in hell if ever a man--"

"Sh!" whispered the woman in horror. "God forgive you for uttering
words like that!"

"Every one in the city knows what sort of a man he's been," said
Drake.

"He comes of a fine family," said the coroner. "One of the best in
New York. I guess he's never been much of a credit to it, however."

"They say he ran after chorus girls," said Mrs. Burton. The men
grinned.

"I've an idea she's had the devil's own time with him," mused the
sheriff, with a jerk of his head in the direction of the door.

"Poor thing," said the inn-keeper's wife.

"Well," said Drake, taking a deep breath, "she won't have to worry
any more about his not coming home nights. I say, this business will
create a fearful sensation, sheriff. The Four Hundred will have a
conniption fit."

"We've got to land that girl, whoever she is," grated the official.
"Now that we know who he is, it shouldn't be hard to pick out the
women he's been trailing with lately. Then we can sift 'em down
until the right one is left. It ought to be easy."

"I'm not so sure of it," said the coroner, shaking his head. "I
have a feeling that she isn't one of the ordinary type. It wouldn't
surprise me if she belongs to--well, you might say, the upper ten.
Somebody's wife, don't you see. That will make it rather difficult,
especially as her tracks have been pretty well covered."

"It beats me, how she got away without leaving a single sign behind
her," acknowledged the sheriff. "She's a wonder, that's all I've
got to say."

At that instant the door opened and Mrs. Wrandall appeared. She
stopped short, confronting the huddled group, dry-eyed but as pallid
as a ghost. Her eyes were wide, apparently unseeing; her colourless
lips were parted in the drawn rigidity that suggested but one
thing to the professional man who looks: the RISIS SARDONICUS of
the strychnae victim. With a low cry, the doctor started forward,
fully convinced that she had swallowed the deadly drug.

"For God's sake, madam," he began. But as he spoke, her expression
changed; she seemed to be aware of their presence for the first
time. Her eyes narrowed in a curious manner, and the rigid lips
seemed to surge with blood, presenting the effect of a queer,
swift-fading smile that lingered long after her face was set and
serious.

"I neglected to raise the window, Dr. Sheef," she said in a low
voice. "It was very cold in there." She shivered slightly. "Will
you be so kind as to tell me what I am to do now? What formalities
remain for me--"

The coroner was at her side. "Time enough for that, Mrs. Wrandall.
The first thing you are to do is to take something warm to drink,
and pull yourself together a bit--"

She drew herself up coldly. "I am quite myself, Dr. Sheef. Pray do
not alarm yourself on my account. I shall be obliged to you, however,
if you will tell me what I am to do as speedily as possible, and
let me do it so that I may leave this--this unhappy place without
delay. No! I mean it, sir. I am going to-night--unless, of course,"
she said, with a quick look at the sheriff, "the law stands in the
way."

"You are at liberty to come and go as you please, Mrs. Wrandall,"
said the sheriff, "but it is most fool-hardy to think of--"

"Thank you, Mr. Sheriff," she said, "for letting me go. I thought
perhaps there might be legal restraint." She sent a swift glance
over her shoulder, and then spoke in a high, shrill voice, indicative
of extreme dread and uneasiness:

"Close the door to that room!"

The door was standing wide open, just as she had left it. Startled,
the coroner's deputy sprang forward to close it. Involuntarily,
all of her listeners looked in the direction of the room, as if
expecting to see the form of the murdered man advancing upon them.
The feeling, swiftly gone, was most uncanny.

"Close it from the INSIDE," commanded the coroner, with unmistakable
emphasis. The man hesitated, and then did as he was ordered, but
not without a curious look at the wife of the dead man, whose back
was toward him.

"He will not find anything disturbed, doctor," said she, divining
his thought. "I had the feeling that something was creeping toward
us out of that room."

"You have every reason to be nervous, madam. The situation has been
most extraordinary,--most trying," said the coroner. "I beg of you
to come downstairs, where we may attend to a few necessary details
without delay. It has been a most fatiguing matter for all of us.
Hours without sleep, and such wretched weather."

They descended to the warm little reception-room. She sent at once
for the inn-keeper, who came in and glowered at her as if she were
wholly responsible for the blight that had been put upon his place.

"Will you be good enough to send some one to the station with me
in your depot wagon?" she demanded without hesitation.

He stared. "We don't run a 'bus in the winter time," he said gruffly.

She opened the little chatelaine bag that hung from her wrist and
abstracted a card which she submitted to the coroner.

"You will find, Dr. Sheef, that the car my husband came up here in
belongs to me. This is the card issued by the State. It is in my
name. The factory number is there. You may compare it with the one
on the car. My husband took the car without obtaining my consent."

"Joy riding," said Burton, with an ugly laugh. Then he quailed
before the look she gave him.

"If no other means is offered, Dr. Sheef, I shall ask you to let
me take the car. I am perfectly capable of driving. I have driven
it in the country for two seasons. All I ask is that some one be
directed to go with me to the station. No! Better than that, if
there is some one here who is willing to accompany me to the city,
he shall be handsomely paid for going. It is but little more than
thirty miles.  I refuse to spend the night in this house. That is
final."

They drew apart to confer, leaving her sitting before the fire,
a stark figure that seemed to detach itself entirely from its
surroundings and their companionship. At last, the coroner came to
her side and touched her arm.

"I don't know what the district attorney and the police will say
to it, Mrs. Wrandall, but I shall take it upon myself to deliver
the car to you. The sheriff has gone out to compare the numbers. If
he finds that the car is yours, he will see to it, with Mr. Drake,
that it is made ready for you. I take it that we will have no
difficulty in--" He hesitated, at a loss for words.

"In finding it again in case you need it for evidence?" she supplied.
He nodded. "I shall make it a point, Dr. Sheef, to present the car
to the State after it has served my purpose to-night. I shall not
ride in it again."

"The sheriff has a man who will ride with you to the station or
the city, whichever you may elect. Now, may I trouble you to make
answer to certain questions I shall write out for you at once? The
man is Challis Wrandall, your husband? You are positive?"

"I am positive. He is--or was--Challis Wrandall."

Half an hour later, she was ready for the trip to New York City.
The clock in the office marked the hour as one. A toddied individual
in a great buffalo coat waited for her outside, hiccoughing and
bandying jest with the half-frozen men who had spent the night with
him in the forlorn hope of finding THE GIRL.

Mrs. Wrandall gave final instructions to the coroner and his deputy,
who happened to be the undertaker's assistant. She had answered all
the questions that had been put to her, and had signed the document
with a firm, untrembling hand. Her veil had been lowered since the
beginning of the examination. They did not see her face; they only
heard the calm, low voice, sweet with fatigue and dread.

"I shall notify my brother-in-law as soon as I reach the city," she
said. "He will attend to everything. Mr. Leslie Wrandall, I mean.
My husband's only brother. He will be here in the morning, Dr. Sheef.
My own apartment is not open. I have been staying in a hotel since
my return from Europe two days ago. But I shall attend to the
opening of the place to-morrow. You will find me there."

The coroner hesitated a moment before putting the question that
had come to his mind as she spoke.

"Two days ago, madam? May I inquire where your husband has been
living during your absence abroad? When did you last see him alive?"

She did not reply for many seconds, and then it was with a perceptible
effort.

"I have not seen him since my return until--to-night," she replied,
a hoarse note creeping into her voice. "He did not meet me on
my return. His brother Leslie came to the dock. He--he said that
Challis, who came back from Europe two weeks ahead of me, had been
called to St. Louis on very important, business. My husband had
been living at his club, I understand. That is all I can tell you,
sir."

"I see," said the coroner gently.

He opened the door for her and she passed out. A number of men
were grouped about the throbbing motor-car. They fell away as she
approached, silently fading into the shadows like so many vast,
unwholesome ghosts. The sheriff and Drake came forward.

"This man will go with you, madam," said the sheriff, pointing
to an unsteady figure beside the machine. "He is the only one who
will undertake it. They're all played out, you see. He has been
drinking, but only on account of the hardships he has undergone
to-night. You will be quite safe with Morley."

No snow was falling, but a bleak wind blew meanly. The air was free
from particles of sleet; wetly the fall of the night clung to the
earth where it had fallen.

"If he will guide me to the Post-road, that is all I ask," said
she hurriedly. Involuntarily she glanced upward. The curtains in
an upstairs window were blowing inward and a dim light shone out
upon the roof of the porch. She shuddered and then climbed up to
the seat and took her place at the wheel.

A few moments later, the three men standing in the middle of the
road watched the car as it rushed away.

"By George, she's a wonder!" said the sheriff.




CHAPTER II

THE PASSING OF A NIGHT


The sheriff was right. Sara Wrandall was an extraordinary woman,
if I may be permitted to modify his rather crude estimate of her.
It is difficult to understand, much less to describe a nature like
hers.  Fine-minded, gently bred women who can go through an ordeal
such as she experienced without breaking under the strain are
rare indeed.  They must be wonderful. It is hard to imagine a more
heart-breaking crisis in life than the one which confronted her
on this dreadful night, and yet she had faced it with a fortitude
that seems almost unholy.

She had loved her handsome, wayward husband. He had hurt her deeply
more times than she chose to remember during the six years of their
married life, but she had loved him in spite of the wounds up to
the instant when she stood beside his dead body in the cold little
room at Burton's Inn. She went there loving him as he had lived,
yet prepared, almost foresworn, to loathe him as he had died, and
she left him lying there alone in that dreary room without a spark
of the old affection in her soul. Her love for him died in giving
birth to the hatred that now possessed her. While he lived it
was not in her power to control the unreasoning resistless thing
that stands for love in woman: he WAS her love, the master of her
impulses.  Dead, he was an unwholesome, unlovely clod, a pallid
thing to be scorned, a hulk of worthless clay. His blood was cold.
He could no longer warm her with it; it could no longer kill the
chill that his misdeeds cast about her tender sensitiveness; his
lips and eyes never more could smile and conquer. He was a dead
thing. Her love was a dead thing. They lay separate and apart. The
tie was broken.  With love died the final spark of respect she had
left for him in her tired, loyal, betrayed heart. He was at last
a thing to be despised, even by her. She despised him.

She sent the car down the slope and across the moonless valley
with small regard for her own or her companion's safety. It swerved
from side to side, skidded and leaped with terrifying suddenness,
but held its way as straight as the bird that flies, driven by a
steady hand and a mind that had no thought for peril. A sober man
at her side would have been afraid; this man swayed mildly to and
fro and chuckled with drunken glee.

Her bitter thoughts were not of the dead man back there, but of the
live years that she was to bury with him: years that would never
pass beyond her ken, that would never die. He had loved her in his
wild, ruthless way. He had left her times without number in the
years gone by, but he had always come back, gaily unchastened, to
remould the love that waited with dog-like fidelity for the touch
of his cunning hand. But he had taken his last flight. He would
not come back again. It was all over. Once too often he had tried
his reckless wings. She would not have to forgive him again.
Uppermost in her mind was the curiously restful thought that his
troubles were over, and with them her own. A hand less forgiving
than hers had struck him dead.

Somehow, she envied the woman to whom that hand belonged. It had
been her divine right to kill, and yet another took it from her.

Back there at the inn she had said to the astonished sheriff:

"Poor thing, if she can escape punishment for this, let it be so.
I shall not help the law to kill her simply because she took it
in her own hands to pay that man what she owed him. I shall not be
the one to say that he did not deserve death at her hands, whoever
she may be. No, I shall offer no reward. If you catch her, I shall
be sorry for her, Mr. Sheriff. Believe me, I bear her no grudge."

"But she robbed him," the sheriff had cried.

"From my point of view, Mr. Sheriff, that hasn't anything to do
with the case," was her significant reply.

"Of course, I am not defending HIM."

"Nor am I defending her," she had retorted. "It would appear that
she is able to defend herself."

Now, on the cold, trackless road, she was saying to herself that
she did have a grudge against the woman who had destroyed the life
that belonged to her, who had killed the thing that was hers to
kill. She could not mourn for him. She could only wonder what the
poor, hunted terrified creature would do when taken and made to
pay for the thing she had done.

Once, in the course of her bitter reflections, she spoke aloud in
a shrill, tense voice, forgetful of the presence of the man beside
her:

"Thank God, they will see him now as I have seen him all these
years. They will know him as they have never known him. Thank God
for that!"

The man looked at her stupidly and muttered something under his
breath. She heard him, and recalling her wits, asked which turn she
was to take for the station. The fellow lopped back in the seat,
too drunk to reply.

For a moment she was dismayed, frightened. Then she resolutely
reached out and shook him by the shoulder. She had brought the car
to a full stop.

"Arouse yourself, man!" she cried. "Do you want to freeze to death?
Where is the station?"

He straightened up with an effort, and, after vainly seeking light
in the darkness, fell back again with a grunt, but managed to wave
his hand toward the left. She took the chance. In five minutes she
brought the car to a standstill beside the station. Through the
window she saw a man with his feet cocked high, reading. He leaped
to his feet in amazement as she entered the waiting-room.

"Are you the agent?" she demanded.

"No, ma'am. I'm simply stayin' here for the sheriff. We're lookin'
for a woman--Say!" He stopped short and stared at the veiled face
with wide, excited eyes. "Gee whiz! Maybe you--"

"No, I am not the woman you want. Do you know anything about the
trains?"

"I guess I'll telephone to the sheriff before I--"

"If you will step outside you will find one of the sheriff's deputies
in my automobile, helplessly intoxicated. I am Mrs.  Wrandall."

"Oh," he gasped. "I heard 'em say you were coming up to-night.
Well, say! What do you think of--"

"Is there a train in before morning?"

"No ma'am. Seven-forty is the first."

She waited a moment. "Then I shall have to ask you to come out and
get your fellow-deputy. He is useless to me. I mean to go on in
the machine. The sheriff understands."

The fellow hesitated.

"I cannot take him with me, and he will freeze to death if I leave
him in the road. Will you come?"

The man stared at her.

"Say, IS it your husband?" he asked agape.

She nodded her head.

"Well, I'll go out and have a look at the fellow you've got with
you," said he, still doubtful.

She stood in the door while he crossed over to the car and peered
at the face of the sleeper.

"Steve Morley," he said. "Fuller'n a goat."

"Please remove him from the car," she directed.

Later on, as he stood looking down at the inert figure in the
big rocking chair, and panting from his labours, he heard her say
patiently:

"And now will you be so good as to direct me to the Post-road."

He scratched his head. "This is mighty queer, the whole business,"
he declared, assailed by doubts. "Suppose you are NOT Mrs. Wrandall,
but--the other one. What then?"

As if in answer to his question, the man Morley opened his blear-eyes
and tried to get to his feet.

"Wha--what are we doin' here, Mis' Wran'all? Wha's up?"

"Stay where you are, Steve," said the other. "It's all right."
Then he went forth and pointed the way to her. "It's a long ways
to Columbus Circle," he said. "I don't envy you the trip. Keep
straight ahead after you hit the Post-road." He stood there listening
until the whir of the motor was lost in the distance. "She'll never
make it," he said to himself. "It's more than a strong man could
do on roads like these. She must be crazy."

Coming to the Post-road, she increased the speed of the car, with
the sharp wind behind her, her eyes intent on the white stretch
that leaped up in front of the lamps like a blank wall beyond
which there was nothing but dense oblivion. But for the fact that
she knew that this road ran straight and unobstructed into the
outskirts of New York, she might have lost courage and decision. The
natural confidence of an experienced driver was hers. She had the
daring of one who has never met with an accident, and who trusts to
the instincts rather than to an actual understanding of conditions.
With her, it was not a question of her own capacity and strength,
but a belief in the fidelity of the engine that carried her forward.
It had not occurred to her that the task of guiding that heavy,
swerving thing through the unbroken road was something beyond her
powers of endurance. She often had driven it a hundred miles and
more without resting, or without losing zest in the enterprise:
then why should she fear the small matter of thirty miles, even
under the most trying of conditions?

The restless, driving desire to be as far as possible from that
horrid sight at the inn, with all that went to make it repellant,
put strength into her arms. The car swung from one side of the road
to the other, picking its way through the opaque desert, reeling
from rut to rut past hideous shadows and deeper into the black
abyss that lay ahead. No friendly light gleamed by the wayside; the
world was black and cold and dead. She alone was on the highway,
the only human creature who defied the night. Off there on either
side people lived, and slept, and were in darkness just as she was,
but not in dreadful darkness. They were not pursued by ghosts; they
were not running away from a Thing! They slept and were at peace,
and their lights were out for they were not afraid in the dark.
She thought of it: she was alone! No other creature was abroad--not
one!

Sharply there came to her mind the question: was she the only one
abroad in this black little world? What of the other woman? The
one who was being hunted? Where was she? And what of the ghost at
HER heels?

The car bounded over a railroad crossing. She recalled the directions
given by the man at the station and hastily applied the brake. There
was another and more dangerous crossing a hundred yards ahead. She
had been warned particularly to take it carefully, as there was a
sharp curve in the road beyond.

Suddenly she jammed down the emergency brake, a startled exclamation
falling from her lips. Not twenty feet ahead, in the middle of
the road and directly in line with the light of the lamps, stood
a black, motionless figure--the figure of a woman whose head was
lowered and whose arms hung limply at her sides.

The woman in the car bent forward over the wheel, staring hard. Many
seconds passed. At last the forlorn object in the roadway lifted
her face and looked vacantly into the glare of the lamps. Her eyes
were wide-open, her face a ghastly white.

"God in heaven!" struggled from the stiffening lips of Sara Wrandall.
Her fingers tightened on the wheel.

She knew. This was the woman!

The long brown ulster; the limp, fluttering veil! "A woman about
your size and figure," the sheriff had said.

The figure swayed and then moved a few steps forward. Blinded by
the lights, she bent her head and shielded her eyes with her hand
the better to glimpse the occupant of the car.

"Are you looking for me?" she cried out shrilly, at the same time
spreading her arms as if in surrender. It was almost a wail.

Mrs. Wrandall caught her breath. Her heart began to beat once more.

"Who are you? What do you want?" she cried out, without knowing
what she said.

The girl started. She had not expected to hear the voice of a woman.
She staggered to the side of the road, out of the line of light.

"I--I beg your pardon," she cried,--it was like a wail of
disappointment,--"I am sorry to have stopped you."

"Come here," commanded the other, still staring.

The unsteady figure advanced. Halting beside the car, she leaned
across the spare tires and gazed into the eyes of the driver. Their
faces were not more than a foot apart, their eyes were narrowed in
tense scrutiny.

"What do you want?" repeated Mrs. Wrandall, her voice hoarse and
tremulous.

"I am looking for an inn. It must be near by. I do--"

"An inn?" with a start.

"I do not recall the name. It is not far from a village, in the
hills."

"Do you mean Burton's?"

"Yes. That's it. Can you direct me?" The voice of the girl was
faint; she seemed about to fall.

"It is six or eight miles from here," said Mrs. Wrandall, still
looking in wonder at the miserable nightfarer.

The girl's head sank; a moan of despair came through her lips,
ending in a sob.

"So far as that?" she murmured. Then she drew herself up with a
fine show of resolution. "But I must not stop here. Thank you."

"Wait!" cried the other. The girl turned to her once more. "Is--is
it a matter of life or death?"

There was a long silence. "Yes. I must find my way there. It
is--death."

Sara Wrandall laid her heavily gloved hand on the slim fingers that
touched the tire.

"Listen to me," she said, a shrill note of resolve ringing in her
voice. "I am going to New York. Won't you let me take you with me?"

The girl drew back, wonder and apprehension struggling for the
mastery of her eyes.

"But I am bound the other way. To the inn. I must go on."

"Come with me," said Sara Wrandall firmly. "You must not go back
there. I know what has happened there. Come! I will take care of
you. You must not go to the inn."

"You know?" faltered the girl.

"Yes. You poor thing!" There was infinite pity in her voice.

The girl laid her head on her arms.

Mrs. Wrandall sat above her, looking down, held mute by warring
emotions. The impossible had come to pass. The girl for whom the
whole world would be searching in a day or two, had stepped out
of the unknown and, by the most whimsical jest of fate, into the
custody of the one person most interested of all in that self-same
world. It was unbelievable. She wondered if it were not a dream,
or the hallucination of an overwrought mind. Spurred by the sudden
doubt as to the reality of the object before her, she stretched
out her hand and touched the girl's shoulder.

Instantly she looked up. Her fingers sought the friendly hand and
clasped it tightly.

"Oh, if you will only take me to the city with you! If you only
give me the chance," she cried hoarsely. "I don't know what impulse
was driving me back there. I only know I could not help myself.
You really mean it? You WILL take me with you?"

"Yes. Don't be afraid. Come! Get in," said the woman in the car
rapidly. "You--you are real?"

The girl did not hear the strange question. She was hurrying around
to the opposite side of the car. As she crossed before the lamps,
Mrs. Wrandall noticed with dulled interest that her garments were
covered with mud; her small, comely hat was in sad disorder; loose
wisps of hair fluttered with the unsightly veil. Her hands, she
recalled, were clad in thin suede gloves. She would be half-frozen.
She had been out in all this terrible weather,--perhaps since the
hour of her flight from the inn.

The odd feeling of pity grew stronger within her. She made no
effort to analyse it, nor to account for it. Why should she pity
the slayer of her husband? It was a question unasked, unconsidered.
Afterwards she was to recall this hour and its strange impulses,
and to realise that it was not pity, but mercy that moved her to
do the extraordinary thing that followed.

Trembling all over, her teeth chattering, her breath coming in
short little moans, the girl struggled up beside her and fell back
in the seat. Without a word, Sara Wrandall drew the great buffalo
robe over her and tucked it in about her feet and legs and far up
about her body, which had slumped down in the seat.

"You are very, very good," chattered the girl, almost inaudibly.
"I shall never forget--" She did not complete the sentence, but
sat upright and fixed her gaze on her companion's face. "You--you
are not doing this just to turn me over to--to the police? They
must be searching for me. You are not going to give me up to them,
are you?  There will be a reward I--"

"There is no reward," said Sara Wrandall sharply. "I do not mean to
give you up. I am simply giving you a chance to get away. I have
always felt sorry for the fox when the time for the kill drew near.
That's the way I feel."

"Oh, thank you! Thank you! But what am I saying? Why should I permit
you to do this for me? I meant to go back there and have it over
with. I know I can't escape. It will have to come, it is bound to
come. Why put it off? Let them take me, let them do what they will
with me. I--"

"Hush! We'll see. First of all, understand me: I shall not turn you
over to the police. I will give you the chance. I will help you.
I can do no more than that."

"But why should you help me? I--I--Oh, I can't let you do it! You
do not understand. I--have--committed--a--terrible--" she broke
off with a groan.

"I understand," said the other, something like grimness in her level
tones. "I have been tempted more than once myself." The enigmatic
remark made no impression on the listener.

"I wonder how long ago it was that it all happened," muttered the
girl, as if to herself. "It seems ages,--oh, such ages."

"Where have you been hiding since last night?" asked Mrs. Wrandall,
throwing in the clutch. The car started forward with a jerk, kicking
up the snow behind it.

"Was it only last night? Oh, I've been--" The thought of her
sufferings from exposure and dread was too much for the wretched
creature. She broke out in a soft wail.

"You've been out in all this weather?" demanded the other.

"I lost my way. In the hills back there. I don't know where I was."

"Had you no place of shelter?"

"Where could I seek shelter? I spent the day in the cellar of a
farmer's house. He didn't know I was there. I have had no food."

"Why did you kill that man?"

"There was nothing left for me to do but that."

"And why did you rob him?"

"Ah, I had ample time to think of all that. You may tell the
officers they will find everything hidden in that farmhouse cellar.
God knows I did not want them. I am not a thief. I'm not so bad as
that."

Mrs. Wrandall marvelled. "Not so bad as that!" And she was a
murderess, a wanton!

"You are hungry? You must be famished."

"No, I am not hungry. I have not thought of food." She said it in
such a way that the other knew what her whole mind had been given
over to since the night before.

A fresh impulse seized her. "You shall have food and a place where
you can sleep--and rest," she said. "Now please don't say anything
more. I do not want to know too much. The least you say to-night,
the better for--for both of us."

With that she devoted all of her attention to the car, increasing
the speed considerably. Far ahead she could see twinkling, will-o'-the-wisp
lights, the first signs of thickly populated districts. They were
still eight or ten miles from the outskirts of the city and the
way was arduous. She was conscious of a sudden feeling of fatigue.
The chill of the night seemed to have made itself felt with abrupt,
almost stupefying force. She wondered if she could keep her strength,
her courage,--her nerves.

The girl was English. Mrs. Wrandall was convinced of the fact almost
immediately. Unmistakably English and apparently of the cultivated
type. In fact, the peculiarities of speech that determines the London
show-girl or music-hall character were wholly lacking. Her voice,
her manner, even under such trying conditions, were characteristic
of the English woman of cultivation. Despite the dreadful strain
under which she laboured, there were evidences of that curious
serenity which marks the English woman of the better classes: an
inborn composure, a calm orderliness of the emotions.  Mrs. Wrandall
was conscious of a sense of surprise, of a wonder that increased as
her thoughts resolved themselves into something less chaotic than
they were at the time of contact with this visible condition.

For a mile or more, she sent the car along with reckless disregard
for comfort or safety. Her mind was groping for something tangible
in the way of intentions. What was she to do with this creature?
What was to become of her? At what street corner should she turn
her adrift? The idea of handing her over to the police did not
enter her thoughts for an instant. Somehow she felt that the girl
was a stranger to the city. She could not explain the feeling, yet
it was with her and very persistent. Of course, there was a home
of some sort, or lodgings, or friends, but would the girl dare show
herself in familiar haunts?

She had said to the sheriff that she hoped the slayer of her husband
would never be caught. She recalled her words, and she remembered how
sincere she had been in uttering them. But she had not figured on
herself as an instrument in furthering the hope to the point of actual
realisation. What could be more incongruous, more theatric,--yes,
more bizarre, than her attitude at this moment? It seemed impossible
that this shrinking, inert heap at her side was a living thing; a
woman who had slain a fellow creature, and that creature the man
who had been her husband for six years. It seemed utterly beyond
sense or reason that she should be helping this murderess to escape,
that she should be showing her the slightest sign of mercy. And
yet, it was all true. She was helping her, she was befriending her.

She found herself wondering why the poor wretch had not made way
with herself. Escape seemed out of the question. That must have been
clear to her from the beginning, else why was she going back there
to give herself up? What better way out of it all than self-destruction?
Sara Wrandall reached a sudden conclusion. She would advise the girl
to leave the car when they reached the centre of a certain bridge
that spanned the river! No one would find her...

Even as the thought took shape in her mind, she experienced a great
sense of awe, so overwhelming that she cried out with the horror
of it. She turned her head for a quick glance at the mute, wretched
face showing white above the robe, and her heart ached with sudden
pity for her. The thought of that slender, alive thing going down
to the icy waters--her soul turned sick with the dread of it!

In that instant, Sara Wrandall--no philanthropist, no sentimentalist--made
up her mind to give this erring one more than an even chance for
salvation. She would see her safely across THAT bridge and many
others. God had directed the footsteps of this girl so that she
should fall in with the one best qualified to pass judgment on
her. It was in that person's power to save her or destroy her. The
commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," took on a broader meaning as
she considered the power that was hers: the power to kill.

Back of all these finely human impulses was the mysterious arbiter
that makes great decisions for all of us, from which there can be
no appeal, and which brooks no argument: Self. Self it was that
put a single question to her and answered it as well: what personal
grievance had she against this unhappy girl? None whatever. Self it
was therefore that slyly thanked her for an unspeakable blessing:
she had brought to an end not only the life of her husband but the
false position she herself had been obliged to maintain through a
mistaken sense of duty and self-respect. And who was to say, outside
the law, that this frail girl had not just cause to slay?

A great relaxation came over Sara Wrandall. It was as if every
nerve, every muscle in her body had reached the snapping point
and suddenly had given way. For a moment her hands were weak and
powerless; her head fell forward. In an instant she conquered,--but
only partially,--the strange feeling of lassitude. Then she realised
how tired she was, how fiercely the strain had told on her body
and brain, how much she had really suffered.

Her blurred eyes turned once more for a look at the girl, who
sat there, just as she had been sitting for miles, her white face
standing out with almost unnatural clearness, and as rigid as that
of the sphinx.

The girl spoke. "Do they hang women in this country?"

Mrs. Wrandall started. "In some of the States," she replied, and
was unable to account for the swift impulse to evade.

"But in this State?" persisted the other, almost without a movement
of the lips.

"They send them to the electric chair--sometimes," said Mrs.
Wrandall.

There was a long silence between them, broken finally by the girl.

"You have been very kind to me, madam. I have no means of expressing
my gratitude. I can only say that I shall bless you to my dying
hour. May I trouble you to set me down at the bridge? I remember
crossing one. I shall be able to--"

"No!" cried Mrs. Wrandall shrilly, divining the other's intention
at once. "You shall not do that. I too thought of that as a way out
of it for you, but--no, it must not be that. Give me a few minutes
to think. I will find a way."

The girl turned toward her. Her eyes were burning.

"Do you mean that you will help me to get away?" she cried, slowly,
incredulously.

"Let me think!"

"You will lay yourself liable--"

"Let me think, I say."

"But I mean to surrender myself to--"

"An hour ago you meant to do it, but what were you thinking of ten
minutes ago? Not surrender. You were thinking of the bridge. Listen
to me now: I am sure that I can save you. I do not know all the--all
the circumstances connected with your association with--with that
man back there at the inn. Twenty-four hours passed before they
were able to identify him. It is not unlikely that to-morrow may
put them in possession of the name of the woman who went with him
to that place. They do not know it to-night, of that I am positive.
You covered your trail too well. But you must have been seen with
him during the day or the night--"

The other broke in eagerly: "I don't believe any one knows that
I--that I went out there with him. He arranged it very--carefully.
Oh, what a beast he was!" The bitterness of that wail caused the
woman beside her to cry out as if hurt by a sharp, almost unbearable
pain. For an instant she seemed about to lose control of herself.
The car swerved and came dangerously near to leaving the road.

A full minute passed before she could trust herself to speak. Then
it was with a deep hoarseness in her voice.

"You can tell me about it later on, not now. I don't want to hear
it. Tell me, where do you live?"

The girl's manner changed so absolutely that there could be but
one inference: she was acutely suspicious. Her lips tightened and
her figure seemed to stiffen in in the seat.

"Where do you live?" repeated the other sharply.

"Why should I tell you that? I do not know you. You--"

"You are afraid of me?"

"Oh, I don't know what to say, or what to do," came from the lips
of the hunted one. "I have no friends, no one to turn to, no one to
help me. You--you can't be so heartless as to lead me on and then
give me up to--God help me, I--I should not be made to suffer for
what I have done. If you only knew the circumstances. If you only
knew--"

"Stop!" cried the other, in agony.

The girl was bewildered. "You are so strange. I don't understand--"

"We have but two or three miles to go," interrupted Mrs. Wrandall.
"We must think hard and--rapidly. Are you willing to come with me
to my hotel? You will be safe there for the present. To-morrow we
can plan something for the future."

"If I can only find a place to rest for a little while," began the
other.

"I shall be busy all day, you will not be disturbed. But leave the
rest to me. I shall find a way."

It was nearly three o'clock when she brought the car to a stop in
front of a small, exclusive hotel not far from Central Park. The
street was dark and the vestibule was but dimly lighted. No attendant
was in sight.

"Slip into this," commanded Mrs. Wrandall, beginning to divest
herself of her own fur coat. "It will cover your muddy garments. I
am quite warmly dressed. Don't worry. Be quick. For the time being
you are my guest here. You will not be questioned. No one need know
who you are. It will not matter if you look distressed. You have
just heard of the dreadful thing that has happened to me. You--"

"Happened to you?" cried the girl, drawing the coat about her.

"A member of my family has died. They know it in the hotel by this
time. I was called to the death bed--to-night. That is all you will
have to know."

"Oh, I am sorry--"

"Come, let us go in. When we reach my rooms, you may order food and
drink. You must do it, not I. Please try to remember that it is I
who am suffering, not you."

A sleepy night watchman took them up in the elevator. He was not
even interested. Mrs. Wrandall did not speak, but leaned rather
heavily on the arm of her companion. The door had no sooner closed
behind them when the girl collapsed. She sank to the floor in a
heap.

"Get up!" commanded her hostess sharply. This was not the time for
soft, persuasive words. "Get up at once. You are young and strong.
You must show the stuff you are made of now if you ever mean to
show it. I cannot help you if you quail."

The girl looked up piteously, and then struggled to her feet. She
stood before her protectress, weaving like a frail reed in the
wind, pallid to the lips.

"I beg your pardon," she murmured. "I will not give way like that
again. I dare say I'm faint. I have had no food, no rest--but never
mind that now. Tell me what I am to do. I will try to obey."

"First of all, get out of those muddy, frozen things you have on."

Mrs. Wrandall herself moved stiffly and with unsteady limbs as
she began to remove her own outer garments. The girl mechanically
followed her example. She was a pitiable object in the strong
light of the electrolier. Muddy from head to foot, water-stained
and bedraggled, her face streaked with dirt, she was the most
unattractive creature one could well imagine.

These women, so strangely thrown together by Fate, maintained
an unbroken silence during the long, fumbling process of partial
disrobing. They scarcely looked at one another, and yet they were
acutely conscious of the interest each felt in the other. The
grateful warmth of the room, the abrupt transition from gloom and
cheerlessness to comfortable obscurity, had a more pronounced effect
on the stranger than on her hostess.

"It is good to feel warm once more," she said, an odd timidness in
her manner. "You are very good to me."

They were in Mrs. Wrandall's bed-chamber, just off the little
sitting-room. Three or four trunks stood against the walls.

"I dismissed my maid on landing. She robbed me," said Mrs. Wrandall,
voicing the relief that was uppermost in her mind. She opened a
closet door and took out a thick eider-down robe, which she tossed
across a chair. "Now call up the office and say that you are speaking
for me. Say to them that I must have something to eat, no matter
what the hour may be. I will get out some clean underwear for you,
and--Oh, yes; if they ask about me, say that I am cold and ill.
That is sufficient. Here is the bath. Please be as quick about it
as possible."

Moving as if in a dream, the girl did as she was told. Twenty minutes
later there was a knock at the door. A waiter appeared with a tray
and service table. He found Mrs. Wrandall lying back in a chair,
attended by a slender young woman in a pink eiderdown dressing-gown,
who gave hesitating directions to him. Then he was dismissed with
a handsome tip, produced by the same young woman.

"You are not to return for these things," she said as he went out.

In silence she ate and drank, her hostess looking on with gloomy
interest. It was no shock to Mrs. Wrandall to find that the girl,
who was no more than twenty-two or three, possessed unusual beauty.
Her great eyes were blue,--the lovely Irish blue,--her skin was
fair and smooth, her features regular and of the delicate mould
that defines the well-bred gentlewoman at a glance. Her hair, now
in order, was dark and thick and lay softly about her small ears
and neck. She was not surprised, I repeat, for she had never known
Challis Wrandall to show interest in any but the most attractive
of her sex. She found herself smiling bitterly as she looked.

To herself she was saying: "It isn't so hard to bear when I realise
that he betrayed me for one who is so much more beautiful than I.
He loved me because I am beautiful. His every defection proves it.
The others have all been beautiful. And to think that this gentle,
slender creature should have been the one to give him his death-blow.
It seems incredible. If it had been struck by some outraged husband,
strong of arm and fierce with vengeance, I could understand. But--but
this young, pretty, soft-eyed thing!"

But who may know the thoughts of the other occupant of that little
sitting-room? Who can put herself in the place of that despairing,
hunted creature who knew that blood was on the hands with which
she ate, and whose eyes were filled with visions of the death-chair?

So great was her fatigue that long before she finished the meal her
tired lids began to droop, her head to nod in spasmodic surrenders
to an overpowering desire for sleep. Suddenly she dropped the fork
from her fingers and sank back in the comfortable chair, her head
resting against the soft, upholstered back. Her lids fell, her hands
dropped to the arms of the chair. A fine line appeared between her
dark eyebrows,--indicative of pain.

For many minutes Sara Wrandall watched the haggardness deepen in
the face of the unconscious sleeper. Then, even as she wondered
at the act, she went over and took up one of the slim hands in her
own. The hand of an aristocrat! It lay limp in hers, and helpless.
Long, tapering fingers and delicately pink with the return of
warmth.

Rousing herself from the mute contemplation of her charge, she shook
the girl's shoulder. Instantly she was awake and staring, alarm in
her dazed, bewildered eyes.

"You must go to bed," said Mrs. Wrandall quietly. "Don't be afraid.
No one will think of coming here."

The girl arose. As she stood before her benefactress, she heard
her murmur as if from afar-off: "Just about your size and figure,"
and wondered not a little.

"You may sleep late. I have many things to do and you will not be
disturbed. Come, take off your clothes and get into my bed.  To-morrow
we will plan further--"

"But, madam," cried the girl, "I cannot take your bed. Where are
you to--"

"If I feel like lying down, I shall lie there beside you."

The girl stared. "Lie beside ME?"

"Yes. Oh, I am not afraid of you, child. You are not a monster.
You are just a poor, tired--"

"Oh, please don't! Please!" cried the other, tears rushing to her
eyes. She raised Mrs. Wrandall's hand to her lips and covered it
with kisses.

Long after she went to sleep, Sara Wrandall stood beside the bed,
looking down at the pain-stricken face, and tried to solve the
problem that suddenly had become a part of her very existence.

"It is not friendship," she argued fiercely. "It is not charity,
it is not humanity. It's the debt I owe, that's all. She did the
thing for me that I could not have done myself because I loved him.
I owe her something for that."

Later on she turned her attention to the trunks. Her decision was
made. With ruthless hands she dragged gown after gown from the
"innovations" and cast them over chairs, on the floor, across the
foot of the bed: smart things from Paris and Vienna; ball gowns,
street gowns, tea gowns, lingerie, blouses, hats, gloves and all
of the countless things that a woman of fashion and means indulges
herself in when she goes abroad for that purpose and no other to
speak of. From the closets she drew forth New York "tailor-suits"
and other garments.

Until long after six o'clock she busied herself over this huge
pile of costly raiment, portions of which she had worn but once or
twice, some not at all, selecting certain dresses, hats, stockings,
etc., each of which she laid carelessly aside: an imposing pile of
many hues, all bright and gay and glittering. In another heap she
laid the sombre things of black: a meagre assortment as compared
to the other.

Then she stood back and surveyed the two heaps with tired eyes, a
curious, almost scornful smile on her lips. "There!" she said with
a sigh. "The black pile is mine, the gay pile is yours," she went
on, turning toward the sleeping girl. "What a travesty!"

Then she gathered up the soiled garments her charge had worn and
cast them into the bottom of a trunk, which she locked. Laying out
a carefully selected assortment of her own garments for the girl's
use when she arose, Mrs. Wrandall sat down beside the bed and
waited, knowing that sleep would not come to her.




CHAPTER III

HETTY CASTLETON


At half-past six she went to the telephone and called for the morning
newspapers. At the same time she asked that a couple of district
messenger boys be sent to her room with the least possible delay.
The hushed, scared voice of the telephone girl downstairs convinced
her that news of the tragedy was abroad; she could imagine the girl
looking at the headlines with awed eyes even as she responded to
the call from room 416, and her shudder as she realised that it
was the wife of the dead man speaking.

One of the night clerks, pale and agitated, came up with the papers.
He inquired if there was anything he could do. He tried to tell
her that it was a dreadful, sickening thing, but the words stuck
in his throat. She stood before him, holding the door open; the
light in the hall fell upon her white, haggard face. He began to
tremble all over, as if with the ague.

"Will you be good enough to come in?" she inquired, quite steadily.
"The newspapers--have they printed the--the details?"

He entered and she closed the door.

"Just the--just the news that it was Mr. Wrandall," he replied
jerkily. "Later on they'll have--"

She interrupted him. "Let me have them, please." Without so much
as a glance at the headlines, she tossed the papers on the table.
"I have sent for two messenger boys. It is too early to accomplish
much by telephone, I fear. Will you be so kind as to telephone at
seven o'clock or a little after to my apartment?--You will find
the number under Mr. Wrandall's name. Please inform the butler or
his wife that they may expect me by ten o'clock, and that I shall
bring a friend with me--a young lady. Kindly have my motor sent
to Haffner's garage, and looked after. When the reporters come, as
they will, please say to them that I will see them at my own home
at eleven o'clock."

"Can't I--we--I should say, don't you want us to send word to
your--your friends, Mrs. Wrandall,--the family, I mean? No trouble
to do it, and--"

"Thank you, no. The messengers will attend to all that is necessary.
When my lawyer arrives, please send him here to me. Mr. Carroll.
Thank you."

The clerk, considerably relieved, took his departure in some
haste, and she was left with the morning papers, each of which she
scanned rapidly. The details, of course, were meagre. There was a
double-leaded account of her visit to the inn and her extraordinary
return to the city. Her chief interest, however, did not rest in
these particulars, but in the speculations of the authorities as
to the identity of the mysterious woman--and her whereabouts. There
was the likelihood that she was not the only one who had encountered
the girl on the highway or in the neighbourhood of the inn. So far
as she could glean from the reports, however, no one had seen the
girl, nor was there the slightest hint offered as to her identity.
The papers of the previous afternoon had published lurid accounts of
the murder, with all of the known details, the name of the victim
at that time still being a mystery. She remembered reading the
story with no little interest. The only new feature in the case,
therefore, was the identification of Challis Wrandall by his
"beautiful wife," and the sensational manner in which it had been
brought about. With considerable interest she noted the hour that
these despatches had been received from "special correspondents,"
and wondered where the shrewd, lynx-eyed reporters napped while
she was at the inn. All of the despatches were timed three o'clock
and each paper characterised its issue as an "Extra," with Challis
Wrandall's name in huge type across as many columns as the dignity
of the sheet permitted.

Not one word of the girl! Absolute mystery!

Mrs. Wrandall returned to her post beside the bed of the sleeper
in the adjoining room. Deliberately she placed the newspapers on
a chair near the girl's pillow, and then raised the window shades
to let in the hard grey light of early morn.

It was not her present intention to arouse the wan stranger, who
slept as one dead. So gentle was her breathing that the watcher
stared in some fear at the fair, smooth breast that seemed scarcely
to rise and fall. For a long time she stood beside the bed, looking
down at the face of the sleeper, a troubled expression in her eyes.

"I wonder how many times you were seen with him, and where, and by
whom," were the questions that ran in a single strain through her
mind. "Where do you come from? Where did you meet him? Who is there
that knows of your acquaintance with him?"

There was no kindly light in her eyes, nor was there the faintest
sign of animosity. Merely the look of one who calculates in the
interest of a well-shaped purpose. She was estimating the difficulties
that were likely to attend the carrying out of a design as yet
half-formed and quixotic. There were many things to be considered.
At present she was working in utter darkness. What would the light
bring forth?

Her lawyer came in great haste and perturbation at eight o'clock,
in response to the letter delivered by one of the messengers.
A second letter had gone by like means to her husband's brother,
Leslie Wrandall, instructing him to break the news to his father
and mother and to come to her apartment after he had attended to
the removal of the body to the family home near Washington Square.
She made it quite plain that she did not want Challis Wrandall's
body to lie under the roof that sheltered her.

His family had resented their marriage. Father, mother and sister had
objected to her from the beginning, not because she was unworthy,
but because her tradespeople ancestry was not so remote as his. She
found a curious sense of pleasure in returning to them the thing
they prized so highly and surrendered to her with such bitterness
of heart. She had not been good enough for him: that was their
attitude. Now she was returning him to them, as one would return
an article that had been tested and found to be worthless.  She
would have no more of him!

Leslie, three years younger than Challis, did not hold to the views
that actuated the remaining members of the family in opposing her
as an addition to the rather close corporation known far and wide
as "the Wrandalls." He had stood out for her in a rather mild but
none-the-less steadfast manner, blandly informing his mother on
mere than one occasion that Sara was quite too good for Challis,
any way you looked at it: an attitude which provoked sundry caustic
references to his own lamentable shortcomings in the matter of
family pride and--intelligence.

He and Sara had been good friends after a fashion. He was a bit of
a snob but not much of a prig. She had the feeling about him that
if he could be weaned away from the family he might stand for
something fine in the way of character. But he was an adept at
straddling fences, so that he was never fully on one side or the
other, no matter which way he leaned.

He had not been deeply attached to his brother. Their ways were
wide apart. All his life he had known Challis for what he was;
his heart if not his hand was against him. From the first, he had
regarded Sara's marriage as a bad bargain for her, and toward the
last bluntly told her so. Not once but many times had he taken it
upon himself to inform her that she was a fool to put up with all
the beastly things Challis was doing. He characterised as infatuation
the emotion she was prone to call love when they met to discuss
the escapades of the careless Challis, for she always went to him
with her troubles. In direct opposition to his counselling, she
invariably forgave the erring lover who was her husband. Once Leslie
had said to her, in considerable heat: "You act as if you were his
mistress, instead of his wife. Mistresses have to forgive; wives
don't." And she had replied: "Yes, but I'd much rather have him a
lover than a husband." A remark which Leslie never quite fathomed,
being somewhat literal himself.

Carroll, her lawyer, an elderly man of vast experience, was not
surprised to find her quite calm and reasonable. He had come to
know her very well in the past few years. He had been her father's
lawyer up to the time of that excellent tradesman's demise,
and he had settled the estate with such unusual despatch that the
heirs,--there were many of them,--regarded him as an admirable
person and--kept him busy ever afterward straightening out their
own affairs. Which goes to prove that policy is often better than
honesty.

"I quite understand, my dear, that while it is a dreadful shock to
you, you are perfectly reconciled to the--er--to the--well, I might
say the culmination of his troubles," said Mr. Carroll tactfully,
after she had related for his benefit the story of the night's
adventure, with reservation concerning the girl who slumbered in
the room beyond.

"Hardly that, Mr. Carroll. Resigned, perhaps. I can't say that I
am reconciled. All my life I shall feel that I have been cheated,"
she said.

He looked up sharply. Something in her tone puzzled him. "Cheated,
my dear? Oh, I see. Cheated out of years and years of happiness.
I see."

She bowed her head. Neither spoke for a full minute.

"It's a horrible thing to say, Sara, but this tragedy does away
with another and perhaps more unpleasant alternative: the divorce
I have been urging you to consider for so long."

"Yes, we are spared all that," she said. Then she met his gaze with
a sudden flash of anger in her eyes. "But I would not have divorced
him--never. You understood that, didn't you?"

"You couldn't have gone on for ever, my dear child, enduring the--"

She stopped him with a sharp exclamation. "Why discuss it now? Let
the past take care of itself, Mr. Carroll. The past came to an end
night before last, so far as I am concerned. I want advice for the
future, not for the past."

He drew back, hurt by her manner. She was quick to see that she
had offended him.

"I beg your pardon, my best of friends," she cried earnestly.

He smiled. "If you will take PRESENT advice, Sara, you will let go
of yourself for a spell and see if tears won't relieve the tension
under--"

"Tears!" she cried. "Why should I give way to tears? What have I
to weep for? That man up there in the country? The cold, dead thing
that spent its last living moments without a thought of love for
me?  Ah, no, my friend; I shed all my tears while he was alive.
There are none left to be shed for him now. He exacted his full
share of them.  It was his pleasure to wring them from me because
he knew I loved him." She leaned forward and spoke slowly, distinctly,
so that he would never forget the words. "But listen to me, Mr.
Carroll. You also know that I loved him. Can you believe me when
I say to you that I hate that dead thing up there in Burton's Inn
as no one ever hated before? Can you understand what I mean? I hate
that dead body, Mr. Carroll. I loved the life that was in it. It
was the life of him that I loved, the warm, appealing life of him.
It has gone out. Some one less amiable than I suffered at his hands
and--well, that is enough. I hate the dead body she left behind
her, Mr. Carroll."

The lawyer wiped the cool moisture from his brow.

"I think I understand," he said, but he was filled with wonder.
"Extraordinary! Ahem! I should say--Ahem! Dear me! Yes, yes--I've
never really thought of it in that light."

"I dare say you haven't," she said, lying back in the chair as if
suddenly exhausted.

"By the way, my dear, have you breakfasted?"

"No. I hadn't given it a thought. Perhaps it would be better if I
had some coffee--"

"I will ring for a waiter," he said, springing to his feet.

"Not now, please. I have a young friend in the other room--a guest
who arrived last night. She will attend to it when she awakes. Poor
thing, it has been dreadfully trying for her."

"Good heaven, I should think so," said he, with a glance at the
closed door, "Is she asleep?"

"Yes. I shall not call her until you have gone."

"May I enquire--"

"A girl I met recently--an English girl," said she succinctly, and
forthwith changed the subject. "There are a few necessary details
that must be attended to, Mr. Carroll. That is why I sent for you
at this early hour. Mr. Leslie Wrandall will take charge--Ah!" she
straightened up suddenly. "What a farce it is going to be!"

Half an hour later he departed, to rejoin her at eleven o'clock,
when the reporters were to be expected. He was to do the talking
for her. While he was there, Leslie Wrandall called her up on the
telephone. Hearing but one side of the rather prolonged conversation,
he was filled with wonder at the tactful way in which she met
and parried the inevitable questions and suggestions coming from
her horror-struck brother-in-law. Without the slightest trace of
offensiveness in her manner, she gave Leslie to understand that
the final obsequies must be conducted in the home of his parents,
to whom once more her husband belonged, and that she would abide by
all arrangements his family elected to make. Mr. Carroll surmised
from the trend of conversation that young Wrandall was about to
leave for the scene of the tragedy, and that the house was in a
state of unspeakable distress. The lawyer smiled rather grimly to
himself as he turned to look out of the window. He did not have to
be told that Challis was the idol of the family, and that, so far
as they were concerned, he could do no wrong!

After his departure, Mrs. Wrandall gently opened the bedroom door
and was surprised to find the girl wide-awake, resting on one
elbow, her staring eyes fastened on the newspaper that topped the
pile on the chair.

Catching sight of Mrs. Wrandall she pointed to the paper with a
trembling hand and cried out, in a voice full of horror:

"Did you place them there for me to read? Who was with you in the
other room just now? Was it some one about the--some one looking
for me? Speak! Please tell me. I heard a man's voice--"

The other crossed quickly to her side.

"Don't be alarmed. It was my lawyer. There is nothing to fear--at
present. Yes, I left the papers there for you to see. You can see
what a sensation it has caused. Challis Wrandall was one of the most
widely known men in New York. But I suppose you know that without
my telling you."

The girl sank back with a groan. "My God, what have I done? What
will come of it all?"

"I wish I could answer that question," said the other, taking
the girl's hand in hers. Both were trembling. After an instant's
hesitation, she laid her other hand on the dark, dishevelled hair
of the wild-eyed creature, who still continued to stare at the
headlines. "I am quite sure they will not look for you here, or in
my home."

"In your home?"

"You are to go with me. I have thought it all over. It is the only
way. Come, I must ask you to pull yourself together. Get up at once,
and dress. Here are the things you are to wear." She indicated the
orderly pile of garments with a wave of her hand.

Slowly the girl crept out of bed, confused, bewildered, stunned.

"Where are my own things? I--I cannot accept these. Pray give me
my own--"

Mrs. Wrandall checked her.

"You must obey me, if you expect me to help you. Don't you understand
that I have had a--a bereavement? I cannot wear these things now.
They are useless to me. But we will speak of all that later on.
Come, be quick; I will help you to dress. First, go to the telephone
and ask them to send a waiter to--these rooms. We must have something
to eat. Please do as I tell you."

Standing before her benefactress, her fingers fumbling impotently
at the neck of the night-dress, the girl still continued to stare
dumbly into the calm, dark eyes before her.

"You are so good. I--I--"

"Let me help you," interrupted the other, deliberately setting
about to remove the night-dress. The girl caught it up as it slipped
from her shoulders, a warm flush suffusing her face, a shamed look
springing into her eyes.

"Thank you, I can--get on very well. I only wanted to ask you a
question. It has been on my mind, waking and sleeping. Can you tell
me anything about--do you know his wife?"

The question was so abrupt, so startling that Mrs. Wrandall uttered
a sharp little cry. For a moment she could not reply.

"I am so sorry, so desperately sorry for her," added the girl
plaintively.

"I know her," the other managed to say with an effort.

"If I had only known that he had a wife--" began the girl bitterly,
almost angrily.

Mrs. Wrandall grasped her by the arm. "You did not know that he
had a wife?" she cried.

The girl's eyes flashed with a sudden, fierce fire in their depths.

"God in heaven, no! I did not know it until--Oh, I can't speak of
it! Why should I tell you about it? Why should you be interested
in hearing it?"

Mrs. Wrandall drew back and regarded the girl's set, unhappy face.
There was a curious light in her eyes that escaped the other's
notice,--a light that would have puzzled her not a little.

"But you WILL tell me--EVERYTHING--a little later," she said,
strangely calm. "Not now, but,--before many hours have passed. First
of all, you must tell me who you are, where you live,--everything
except what happened in Burton's Inn. I don't want to hear that at
present--perhaps never. Yes, on second thoughts, I will say NEVER!
You are never to tell me just what happened up there, or just what
led up to it. Do you understand? Never!"

The girl stared at her in amazement. "But I--I must tell some one,"
she cried vehemently. "I have a right to defend myself--"

"I am not asking you to defend yourself," said Mrs. Wrandall shortly.
Then, as if afraid to remain longer, she rushed from the room. In
the doorway, she turned for an instant to say: "Do as I told you.
Telephone. Dress as quickly as you can." She closed the door swiftly.

Standing in the centre of the room, her hands clenched until the
nails cut the flesh, she said over and over again to herself: "I
don't want to know! I don't want to KNOW!"

A few minutes later she was critically inspecting the young woman
who came from the bedroom attired in a street dress that neither
of them had ever donned before. The girl, looking fresher, prettier
and even younger than when she had seen her last, was in no way
abashed.  She seemed to have accepted the garments and the situation
in the same spirit of resignation and hope: as if she had decided
to make the most of her slim chance to profit by these amazing
circumstances.

They sat opposite each other at the little breakfast table.

"Please pour the coffee," said Mrs. Wrandall. The waiter had left
the room at her command. The girl's hand shook, but she complied
without a word.

"Now you may tell me who you are and--but wait! You are not to say
anything about what happened at the inn. Guard your words carefully.
I am not asking for a confession. I do not care to know what happened
there. It will make it easier for me to protect you. You may call
it conscience. Keep your big secret to yourself. NOT ONE WORD TO
ME. Do you understand?"

"You mean that I am not to reveal, even to you, the causes which
led up to--"

"Nothing--absolutely nothing," said Mrs. Wrandall firmly.

"But I cannot permit you to judge me, to--well, you might say to
acquit me,--without hearing the story. It is so vital to me."

"I can judge you without hearing all of the--the evidence, if that's
what you mean. Simply answer the questions I shall ask, and nothing
more. There are certain facts I must have from you if I am to shield
you. You must tell me the truth. I take it you are an English girl.
Where do you live? Who are your friends? Where is your family?"

The girl's face flushed for an instant and then grew pale again.

"I will tell you the truth," she said. "My name is Hetty Castleton.
My father is Col. Braid Castleton, of--of the British army. My mother
is dead. She was Kitty Glynn, at one time a popular music-hall
performer in London. She was Irish. She died two years ago. My
father was a gentleman. I do not say he IS a gentleman, for his
treatment of my mother relieves him from that distinction. He is
in the Far East, China, I think. I have not seen him in more than
five years. He deserted my mother. That's all there is to that
side of my story. I appeared in two or three of the musical pieces
produced in London two seasons ago, in the chorus. I never got
beyond that, for very good reasons. I was known as Hetty Glynn.
Three weeks ago I started for New York, sailing from Liverpool.
Previously I had served in the capacity of governess in the family
of John Budlong, a brewer. They had a son, a young man of twenty.
Two months ago I was dismissed. A California lady, Mrs. Holcombe,
offered me a situation as governess to her two little girls soon
afterward. I was to go to her home in San Francisco. She provided
the money necessary for the voyage and for other expenses. She is
still in Europe. I landed in New York a fortnight ago and, following
her directions, presented myself at a certain bank,--I have the
name somewhere--where my railroad tickets were to be in readiness
for me, with further instructions. They were to give me twenty-five
pounds on the presentation of my letter from Mrs. Holcombe. They
gave me the money and then handed me a cable-gram from Mrs. Holcombe,
notifying me that my services would not be required. There was no
explanation. Just that.

"On the steamer I met--HIM. His deck chair was next to mine. I
noticed that his name was Wrandall--'C. Wrandall' the card on the
chair informed me. I--"

"You crossed on the steamer with him?" interrupted Mrs. Wrandall
quickly.

"Yes."

"Had--had you seen him before? In London?"

"Never. Well, we became acquainted, as people do. He--he was very
handsome and agreeable." She paused for a moment to collect herself.

"Very handsome and agreeable," said the other slowly.

"We got to be very good friends. There were not many people on
board, and apparently he knew none of them. It was too cold to stay
on deck much of the time, and it was very rough. He had one of the
splendid suites on the--"

"Pray omit unnecessary details. You landed and went--where?"

"He advised me to go to an hotel--I can't recall the name. It was
rather an unpleasant place. Then I went to the bank, as I have stated.
After that I did not know what to do. I was stunned, bewildered.
I called him up on the telephone and--he asked me to meet him for
dinner at a queer little cafe, far down town. We--"

"And you had no friends, no acquaintances here?"

"No. He suggested that I go into one of the musical shows, saying
he thought he could arrange it with a manager who was a friend.
Anything to tide me over, he said. But I would not consider it,
not for an instant. I had had enough of the stage. I--I am really
not fitted for it. Besides, I AM qualified--well qualified--to
be governess--but that is neither here nor there. I had some
money--perhaps forty pounds. I found lodgings with some people in
Nineteenth street. He never came there to see me. I can see plainly
now why he argued it would not be--well, he used the word 'wise.'
But we went occasionally to dine together. We went about in a
motor--a little red one. He--he told me he loved me. That was one
night about a week ago. I--"

"I don't care to hear about it," cried the other. "No need of that.
Spare me the silly side of the story."

"Silly, madam? In God's name, do you think it was silly to me?
Why--why, I believed him! And, what is more, I believe that he DID
love me--even now I believe it."

"I have no doubt of it," said Mrs. Wrandall calmly. "You are very
pretty--and charming."

"I--I did not know that he had a wife until--well, until--" She
could not go on.

"Night before last?"

The girl shuddered. Mrs. Wrandall turned her face away and waited.

"There is nothing more I can tell you, unless you permit me to tell
ALL," the girl resumed after a moment of hesitation.

Mrs. Wrandall arose.

"I have heard enough. This afternoon I will send my butler with
you to the lodging house in Nineteenth street. He will attend to
the removal of your personal effects to my home, and you will return
with him. It will be testing fate, Miss Castleton, this visit to
your former abiding place, but I have decided to give the law its
chance. If you are suspected, a watch will be set over the house
in which you lived. If you are not suspected, if your association
with--with Wrandall is quite unknown, you will run no risk in going
there openly, nor will I be taking so great a chance as may appear
in offering you a home, for the time being at least, as companion--or
secretary or whatever we may elect to call it for the benefit of
all enquirers. Are you willing to run the risk--this single risk?"

"Perfectly willing," announced the other without hesitation. Indeed,
her face brightened. "If they are waiting there for me, I shall go
with them without a word. I have no means of expressing my gratitude
to you for--"

"There is time enough for that," said Mrs. Wrandall quickly. "And
if they are not there, you will return to me? You will not desert
me now?"

The girl's eyes grew wide with wonder. "Desert you? Why do you put
it in that way? I don't understand."

"You will come back to me?" insisted the other.

"Yes. Why,--why, it means everything to me. It means life,--more
than that, most wonderful friend. Life isn't very sweet to me. But
the joy of giving it to you for ever is the dearest boon I crave.
I DO give it to you. It belongs to you. I--I could die for you."

She dropped to her knees and pressed her lips to Sara Wrandall's
hand; hot tears fell upon it.

Mrs. Wrandall laid her free hand on the dark, glossy hair and smiled;
smiled warmly for the first time in--well, in years she might have
said to herself if she had stopped to consider.

"Get up, my dear," she said gently. "I shall not ask you to die for
me--if you DO come back. I may be sending you to your death, as it
is, but it is the chance we must take. A few hours will tell the
tale. Now listen to what I am about to say,--to propose. I offer
you a home, I offer you friendship and I trust security from the
peril that confronts you. I ask nothing in return, not even a word
of gratitude. You may tell the people at your lodgings that I have
engaged you as companion and that we are to sail for Europe in a
week's time if possible. Now we must prepare to go to my own home.
You will see to packing my--that is, our trunks--"

"Oh, it--it must be a dream!" cried Hetty Castleton, her eyes swimming.
"I can't believe--" Suddenly she caught herself up, and tried to
smile. "I don't see why you do this for me. I do not deserve--"

"You have done me a service," said Mrs. Wrandall, her manner so
peculiar that the girl again assumed the stare of perplexity and
wonder that had been paramount since their meeting: as if she were
on the verge of grasping a great truth.

"What CAN you mean?"

Sara laid her hands on the girl's shoulders and looked steadily
into the puzzled eyes for a moment before speaking.

"My girl," she said, ever so gently, "I shall not ask what your
life has been; I do not care. I shall not ask for references. You
are alone in the world and you need a friend. I too am alone. If
you will come to me I will do everything in my power to make you
comfortable and--contented. Perhaps it will be impossible to make
you happy. I promise faithfully to help you, to shield you, to repay
you for the thing you have done for me. You could not have fallen
into gentler hands than mine will prove to be. That much I swear
to you on my soul, which is sacred. I bear you no ill-will. I have
nothing to avenge."

Hetty drew back, completely mystified.

"Who are you?" she murmured, still staring.

"I am Challis Wrandall's wife."




CHAPTER IV

WHILE THE MOB WAITED


The next day but one, in the huge old-fashioned mansion of
the Wrandalls in lower Fifth Avenue, in the drawing-room directly
beneath the chamber in which Challis was born, the impressive but
grimly conventional funeral services were held.

Contrasting sharply with the sombre, absolutely correct atmosphere
of the gloomy interior was the exterior display of joyous curiosity
that must have jarred severely on the high-bred sensibilities
of the chief mourners, not to speak of the invited guests who had
been obliged to pass between rows of gaping bystanders in order to
reach the portals of the house of grief, and who must have reckoned
with extreme distaste the cost of subsequent departure. A dozen
raucous-voiced policemen were employed to keep back the hundreds
that thronged the sidewalk and blocked the street. Curiosity was
rampant. Ever since the moment that the body of Challis Wrandall
was carried into the house of his father, a motley, varying crowd
of people shifted restlessly in front of the mansion, filled with
gruesome interest in the absolutely unseen, animated by the sly
hope that something sensational might happen if they waited long
enough.

Men, women, children struggled for places nearest the tall iron
fence surrounding the spare yard, and gazed with awed but wistful
eyes at the curtained windows and at the huge bow of crepe on the
massive portals. In hushed voices they spoke of the murder and
expressed a single opinion among them all: the law ought to make
short work of her! If this thing had happened in England, said
they who scoff at our own laws, there wouldn't be any foolishness
about the business: the woman would be buried in quick-lime before
you could know what you were talking about. The law in this country
is a joke, said they, with great irritability. Why can't we do the
business up, sharp and quick, as they do in England? Get it over
with, that's the ticket. What's the sense of dragging it out for a
year? Send 'em to the chair or hang 'em while everybody's interested,
not when the thing's half forgotten. Who wants to see a person
hanged after the crime's been forgotten? And then, think of the
saving to the State? Hang 'em, men or women, and in a couple of
years' time there wouldn't be a tenth part of the murders we have
now. Statistics prove, went on the wise ones, that only one out of
every hundred is hanged. What's that? The jury system is rotten!
No sirree, we are 'way behind England in that respect. Just look
at that big murder case in London last month! Remember it? Murderer
was hanged inside of three weeks after he was caught. That's the
way to do it! And the London police catch 'em too. Our police stand
around doing nothing until the criminal has got a week's start, and
then--oh, well, what can you expect? "Now if I was at the head of
the New York department I'd have that woman behind the bars before
night, that's what I'd do. You bet your life, I would," said more
than one. And no one questioned his ability to do so.

And then all of them would growl at the policemen who pushed them
back from the gates, and call them "scabs" and "mutts" in repressed
tones, and snarl under their breath that they wouldn't be pushing
people around like that if they didn't have stars and clubs and a
great idea of their own importance. "If it wasn't for the family at
home dependin' on me for support, I'd take a punch at that stiff,
so help me God, even if I went to the Island for it!"

And so it WAS and ever shall be, world without end.

Newsboys, hoarse-voiced and pipe-voiced, mingled with the crowd,
and shrieked their extras under the very noses of the always-aloof
Wrandalls, who up to this day had turned them up at the sight of
a vulgar extra, but who now looked down them with a trembling of
the nostrils that left no room for doubt as to their present state
of mind.

Up to the very portals these assiduous peddlers yelped for pennies
and gave in exchange the latest headlines. "All about Mr. Challis
Wran'all's fun'ral!" "Horrible extry!" Ding-donging the thing in
the very ears of the dead man himself!

Motor after motor, carriage after carriage, rolled up to the curb
and emptied its sober-faced, self-conscious occupants in front
of the door with the great black bow; with each arrival the crowd
surged forward, and names were muttered in undertones, passing from
lip to lip until every one in the street knew that Mr. So-and-So,
Mrs. This-or-That, the What-do-you-call-ems and others of the
city's most exclusive but most garishly advertised society leaders
had entered the house of mourning. It was a great show for the
plebeian spectators. Much better than Miss So-and-So's wedding,
said one woman who had attended the aforesaid ceremony as a unit
in the well-dressed mob that almost wrecked the carriages in the
desire to see the terrified bride. Better than a circus, said a man
who held his little daughter above the heads of the crowd so that
she might see the fine lady in a wild-beast fur. Swellest funeral
New York ever had, remarked another, excepting one 'way back when
he was a kid.

At the corner below stood two patrol wagons, also waiting.

Inside the house sat the carefully selected guests, hushed and
stiff and gratified. (Not because they were attending a funeral,
but because the occasion served to separate them from the chaff:
they were the elect.) It would be going too far to intimate that
they were proud of themselves, but it is not stretching it very
much to say that they counted noses with considerable satisfaction
and were glad that they had not been left out. The real, high-water
mark in New York society was established at this memorable function.
It was quite plain to every one that Mrs. Wrandall,--THE Mrs.
Wrandall,--had made out the list of guests to be invited to the
funeral of her son. It was a blue-stocking affair. You couldn't
imagine anything more so. Afterwards, the two hundred who were
there looked with utmost pity and not a little scorn on the other
two hundred who failed to get in, notwithstanding there was ample
room in the spacious house for all of them. There wasn't a questionable
guest in the house, unless one were to question the right of the
dead man's widow to be there--and, after all, she was upstairs with
the family. Even so, she was a Wrandall--remotely, of course, but
recognisable.

Yes, they counted noses, so to say. As one after the other arrived
and was ushered into the huge drawing-room, he or she was accorded
a congratulatory look from those already assembled, a tribute
returned with equal amiability. Each one noted who else was there,
and each one said to himself that at last they really had something
all to themselves. It was truly a pleasure, a relief, to be able to
do something without being pushed about by people who didn't belong
but thought they did. They sat back,--stiffly, of course,--and in
utter stillness confessed that there could be such a thing as the
survival of the fittest. Yes, there wasn't a nose there that couldn't
be counted with perfect serenity. It was a notable occasion.

Mrs. Wrandall, the elder, had made out the list. She did not consult
her daughter-in-law in the matter. It is true that Sara forestalled
her in a way by sending word, through Leslie, that she would be pleased
if Mrs. Wrandall would issue invitations to as many of Challis's
friends as she deemed advisable. As for herself, she had no wish
in the matter; she would be satisfied with whatever arrangements
the family cared to make.

It is not to be supposed, from the foregoing, that Mrs. Wrandall,
the elder, was not stricken to the heart by the lamentable death
of her idol. He WAS her idol. He was her first-born, he was her
love-born. He came to her in the days when she loved her husband
without much thought of respecting him. She was beginning to
regard him as something more than a lover when Leslie came, so it
was different. When their daughter Vivian was born, she was plainly
annoyed but wholly respectful. Mr. Wrandall was no longer the lover;
he was her lord and master. The head of the house of Wrandall was
a person to be looked up to, to be respected and admired by her,
for he was a very great man, but he was dear to her only because
he was the father of Challis, the first-born.

In the order of her nature, Challis therefore was her most dearly
beloved, Vivian the least desired and last in her affections as
well as in sequence.

Strangely enough, the three of them perfected a curiously significant
record of conjugal endowments. Challis had always been the wild,
wayward, unrestrained one, and by far the most lovable; Leslie,
almost as good looking but with scarcely a noticeable trace of the
charm that made his brother attractive; Vivian, handsome, selfish
and as cheerless as the wind that blows across the icebergs in the
north. Challis had been born with a widely enveloping heart and an
elastic conscience; Leslie with a brain and a soul and not much of
a heart, as things go; Vivian with a soul alone, which belonged to
God, after all, and not to her. Of course she had a heart, but it
was only for the purpose of pumping blood to remote extremities, and
had nothing whatever to do with anything so unutterably extraneous
as love, charity or self-sacrifice.

As for Mr. Redmond Wrandall he was a very proper and dignified
gentleman, and old for his years.

Secretly, Vivian was his favourite. Moreover, possessing the
usual contrariness of man, and having been at one time or other, a
hot-blooded lover, he professed--also in secret--a certain admiration
for the beautiful, warm-hearted wife of his eldest son.  He looked
upon her from a man's point of view. He couldn't help that. Not
once, but many times, had he said to himself that perhaps Challis
was lucky to have got her instead of one of the girls his mother
had chosen for him out of the minute elect.

It may be seen, or rather surmised, that if the house of Wrandall
had not been so admirably centred under its own vine and fig tree,
it might have become divided against itself without much of an
effort.

Mrs. Redmond Wrandall was the vine and fig tree.

And now they had brought her dearly beloved son home to her,
murdered and--disgraced. If it had been either of the others, she
could have said: "God's will be done." Instead, she cried out that
God had turned against her.

Leslie had had the bad taste--or perhaps it was misfortune--to
blurt out an agonised "I told you so" at a time when the family
was sitting numb and hushed under the blight of the first horrid
blow.  He did not mean to be unfeeling. It was the truth bursting
from his unhappy lips.

"I knew Chal would come to this--I knew it," he had said. His arm
was about the quivering shoulders of his mother as he said it.

She looked up, a sob breaking in her throat. For a long time she
looked into the face of her second son.

"How can you--how dare you say such a thing as that?" she cried,
aghast.

He coloured, and drew her closer to him.

"I--I didn't mean it," he faltered.

"You have always taken sides against him," began his mother.

"Please, mother," he cried miserably.

"You say this to me NOW," she went on. "You who are left to take
his place in my affection.--Why, Leslie, I--I--"

Vivian interposed. "Les is upset, mamma darling. You know he loved
Challis as deeply as any of us loved him."

Afterwards the girl said to Leslie when they were quite alone:
"She will never forgive you for that, Les. It was a beastly thing
to say."

He bit his lip, which trembled. "She's never cared for me as she
cared for Chal. I'm sorry if I've made it worse."

"See here, Leslie, was Chal so--so--"

"Yes. I meant what I said a while ago. It was sure to happen to
him one time or another. Sara's had a lot to put up with."

"Sara! If she had been the right sort of a wife, this never would
have happened."

"After all is said and done, Vivie, Sara's in a position to rub it
in on us if she's of a mind to do so. She won't do it, of course,
but--I wonder if she isn't gloating, just the same."

"Haven't we treated her as one of us?" demanded she, dabbing her
handkerchief in her eyes. "Since the wedding, I mean. Haven't we
been kind to her?"

"Oh, I think she understands us perfectly," said her brother.

"I wonder what she will do now?" mused Vivian, in that speech
casting her sister-in-law out of her narrow little world as one
would throw aside a burnt-out match.

"She will profit by experience," said he, with some pleasure in a
superior wisdom.

In Mrs. Wrandall's sitting-room at the top of the broad stairway,
sat the family,--that is to say, the IMMEDIATE family,--a solemn-faced
footman in front of the door that stood fully ajar so that the
occupants might hear the words of the minister as they ascended,
sonorous and precise, from the hall below. A minister was he who
knew the buttered side of his bread. His discourse was to be a
beautiful one. He stood at the front of the stairs and faced the
assembled listeners in the hall, the drawing-room and the entresol,
but his infinitely touching words went up one flight and lodged.

Sara Wrandall sat a little to the left of and behind Mrs. Redmond
Wrandall, about whom were grouped the three remaining Wrandalls,
father, son and daughter, closely drawn together. Well to the fore
were Wrandall uncles and cousins and aunts, and one or two carefully
chosen blood-relations to the mistress of the house, whose hand
had long been set against kinsmen of less exalted promise.

The room was dark. A forgotten French clock ticked madly and
tinkled its quarter-hours with surpassing sprightliness. Time went
on regardless. One of the Wrandall uncles, obeying a look from his
wife, tiptoed across the room and tried to find a way to subdue
the jingling disturber. But it chimed in his face, and he put his
black kid glove over his lips. The floor creaked horribly as he
went back to his chair.

Beside Sara Wrandall, on the small pink divan, sat a stranger in
this sombre company: a young woman in black, whose pale face was
uncovered, and whose lashes were lifted so rarely that one could
not know of the deep, real pain that lay behind them, in her Irish
blue eyes.

She had arrived at the house an hour or two before the time set for
the ceremony, in company with the widow. True to her resolution,
the widow of Challis Wrandall had remained away from the home of
his people until the last hour. She had been consulted, to be sure,
in regard to the final arrangements, but the meetings had taken
place in her own apartment, many blocks distant from the house in
lower Fifth Avenue. The afternoon before she had received Redmond
Wrandall and Leslie, his son. She had not sent for them. They came
perfunctorily and not through any sense of obligation. These two
at least knew that sympathy was not what she wanted, but peace.
Twice during the two trying days, Leslie had come to see her. Vivian
telephoned.

On the occasion of his first visit, Leslie had met the guest in the
house. The second time he called, he made it a point to ask Sara
all about her.

It was he who gently closed the door after the two women when, on
the morning of the funeral, they entered the dark, flower-laden
room in which stood the casket containing the body of his brother.
He left them alone together in that room for half an hour or more,
and it was he who went forward to meet them when they came forth.
Sara leaned on his arm as she ascended the stairs to the room where
the others were waiting. The ashen-faced girl followed, her eyes
lowered, her gloved hands clenched.

Mrs. Wrandall, the elder, kissed Sara and drew her down beside her
on the couch. To her own surprise, as well as that of the others,
Sara broke down and wept bitterly. After all, she was sorry for
Challis's mother. It was the human instinct; she could not hold
out against it. And the older woman put away the ancient grudge
she held against this mortal enemy and dissolved into tears of real
compassion.

A little later she whispered brokenly in Sara's ear: "My dear, my
dear, this has brought us together. I hope you will learn to love
me."

Sara caught her breath, but uttered no word. She looked into her
mother-in-law's eyes, and smiled through her tears. The Wrandalls,
looking on in amaze, saw the smile reflected in the face of the
older woman. Then it was that Vivian crossed quickly and put her
arms about the shoulders of her sister-in-law. The white flag on
both sides.

Hetty Castleton stood alone and wavering, just inside the door. No
stranger situation could be imagined than the one in which this
unfortunate girl found herself at the present moment. She was virtually
in the hands of those who would destroy her; she was in the house
of those who most deeply were affected by her act on that fatal
night. Among them all she stood, facing them, listening to the
moans and sobs, and yet her limbs did not give way beneath her....

Some one gently touched her arm. It was Leslie. She shrank back,
a fearful look in her eyes. In the semi-darkness he failed to note
the expression.

"Won't you sit here?" he asked, indicating the little pink divan
against the wall. "Forgive me for letting you stand so long."

She looked about her, the wild light still in her eyes. She was
like a rat in a trap.

Her lips parted, but the word of thanks did not come forth. A
strange, inarticulate sound, almost a gasp, came instead. Pallid
as a ghost, she dropped limply to the divan, and dug her fingers
into the satiny seat. As if fascinated, she stared over the black
heads of the three women immediately in front of her at the full
length portrait hanging where the light from the hall fell full
upon it: the portrait of a dashing youth in riding togs.

A moment later Sara Wrandall came over and sat beside her. The girl
shivered as with a mighty chill when the warm hand of her friend
fell upon hers and enveloped it in a firm clasp.

"His mother kissed me," whispered Sara. "Did you see?"

The girl could not reply. She could only stare at the open door.
A small, hatchet-faced man had come up from below and was nodding
his head to Leslie Wrandall,--a man with short side whiskers, and
a sepulchral look in his eyes. Then, having received a sign from
Leslie, he tiptoed away. Almost instantly the voices of people
singing softly came from some distant, remote part of the house.

And then, a little later, the perfectly modulated voice of a man
in prayer.

Back of her, Wrandalls; beside her, Wrandalls; beneath her, friends
of the Wrandalls; outside, the rabble, those who would join with
these black, raven-like spectres in tearing her to pieces if they
but knew!

Sitting, with his hand to his head, Leslie Wrandall found himself
staring at the face of this stranger among them; not with any
definable interest, but because she happened to be in his line of
vision and her face was so singularly white that it stood out in
cameo-like relief against all this ebony setting.

The droning voice came up from below, each well-chosen word distinct
and clear: tribute beautiful to the irreproachable character of the
deceased. Leslie watched the face of the girl, curiously fascinated
by the set, emotionless features, and yet without a conscious interest
in her. He was dully sensible to the fact that she was beautiful,
uncommonly beautiful. It did not occur to him to feel that she was
out of place among them, that she belonged downstairs.  Somehow
she was a part of the surroundings, like the spectre at the feast.

If he could have witnessed all that transpired while Sara was in
the room below with her guest--her companion, as he had come to
regard her without having in fact been told as much,--he would have
been lost in a maze of the most overwhelming emotions.

To go back: The door had barely closed behind the two women when
Hetty's trembling knees gave way beneath her. With a low moan of
horror, she slipped to the floor, covering her face with her hands.

Sara knelt beside her.

"Come," she said gently, but firmly; "I must exact this much of
you.  If we are to go on together, as we have planned, you must
stand beside me at his bier. Together we must look upon him for the
last time. You must see him as I saw him up there in the country.
I had my cruel blow that night. It is your turn now. I will not
blame you for what you did. But if you expect me to go on believing
that you did a brave thing that night, you must convince me that
you are not a coward now. It is the only test I shall put you to.
Come; I know it is hard, I know it is terrible, but it is the true
test of your ability to go through with it to the end. I shall know
then that you have the courage to face anything that may come up."

She waited a long time, her hand on the girl's shoulder. At last
Hetty arose.

"You are right," she said hoarsely. "I should not be afraid."

Later on, they sat over against the wall beyond the casket, into
which they had peered with widely varying emotions. Sara had said:

"You know that I loved him."

The girl put her hands to her eyes and bowed her head.

"Oh, how can you be so merciful to me?"

"Because he was not," said Sara, white-lipped. Hetty glanced at
the half-averted face with queer, indescribable expression in her
eyes.

Then her nerves gave way. She shrank away from the casket,
whimpering like a frightened child, mouttering, almost gibbering
in the extremity of despair. She had lived in dread of this ordeal;
it had been promised the day before by Sara Wrandall, whose will
was law to her. Now she had come to the very apex of realisation.
She felt that her mind was going, that her blood was freezing. In
response to a sudden impulse she sprang up and ran, blindly and
without thought, bringing up against the wall with such force that
she dropped to the floor, quite insensible.

When she regained her senses, she was lying back in Sara Wrandall's
arms, and a soft faraway voice was pleading with her to wake, to
say something, to open her eyes.

If Leslie Wrandall could have looked in upon them at that moment,
or at any time during the half an hour that followed, he would have
known who was the slayer of his brother, but it is doubtful if he
could have had the heart to denounce her to the world.

When they were ready to leave the room, Hetty had regained control
of her nerves to a most surprising extent, a condition unmistakably
due to the influence of the older woman.

"I can trust myself now, Mrs. Wrandall," said Hetty steadily as
they hesitated for an instant before turning the knob of the door.

"Then, I shall ask YOU to open the door," said Sara, drawing back.

Without a word or a look, Hetty opened the door and permitted the
other to pass out before her. Then she followed, closing it gently,
even deliberately, but not without a swift glance over her shoulder
into the depths of the room they were leaving.

Of the two, Sara Wrandall was the paler as they went up the broad
staircase with Leslie.

The funeral oration by the Rev. Dr. Maltby dragged on. Among all
his hearers there was but one who believed the things he said of
Challis Wrandall, and she was one of two persons who, so the saying
goes, are the last to find a man out; his mother and his sister.
But in this instance the mother was alone. The silent, attentive
guests on the lower floor listened in grim approval: Dr. Maltby
was doing himself proud. Not one but all of them knew that Maltby
KNEW. And yet how soothing he was.

Thus afterwards, to his wife, on the way home after a fruitful
silence, spoke Colonel Berkimer, well known to the Tenderloin:

"When I die, my dear, I want you to be sure to have Maltby in for
the sermon. He's really wonderful."

"You don't mean to say you BELIEVED all that he said," cried his
wife.

"Certainly NOT," he snapped. "That's the point."

Once at the end of a beautifully worded sentence, eulogistic of
the dead man's character as a son and husband, the tense silence
of the room upstairs was shattered by the utterance of a single,
poignant word:

"God!"

It was so expressive of surprise, of scorn, of contempt, although
spoken in little more than a whisper, that every one in the room
caught his or her breath in a sharp little gasp, as if cringing
from the effect of an unexpected shock to a sensitive nerve.

Each looked at his neighbour and then in a shocked sort of way at
every one else, for no one could quite make out who had uttered
the word, and each wondered if, in a fit of abstraction, he could
have done it himself. It unmistakably had been the voice of a woman,
but whose? Hetty knew, but not by the slightest sign did she betray
the fact that the woman who sat beside her was the one to utter
the brief but scathing estimate of the minister's eulogy.

The hatchet-faced little undertaker stood in the open door again
and solemnly bowed his head to Leslie, lifting his dolorous eyebrows
in lieu of the verbal question. Receiving a simple nod in reply,
he announced that as soon as the guests had departed he would be
pleased to have the family descend to the carriages.

Outside, the shivering, half-frozen multitude edged its way up to
the line of blue-coats and again whispered the names of the departing
guests, and every neck was craned in the effort to secure the first
view of the casket, the silk-hatted pall-bearers and the weeping
members of the family.

"They'll be out with 'im in a minute now," said a hoarse-voiced man
who clung to the ornamental face of the tall gate and passed back
the word, for he could see beyond the stream of guests into the
hallway of the house.

"Git down out o' that," commanded a policeman tapping him sharply
with his night-stick.

"Aw, I ain't botherin' anybody--"

"Git down, I say!"

Grumbling, the man slunk back, and a woman took his place. This was
better for the crowd, as her voice was shriller and she had less
compunction about making herself heard.

A small boy crept beyond the line and peered, round-eyed, up the
carpeted steps. He received a sharp push from a night-stick and
went blubbering back into the crowd.

And all through the eager, seething mob went sharp-eyed men in
plain clothes, searching each face with crafty eyes, looking for
the sign that might betray the woman who had brought all this about.
They were men from the central office. Another of their ilk had the
freedom of the house in the guise of an undertaker's assistant. He
watched the favoured few!

There is a saying that a strange, mysterious force drags the
murderer to the scene of his crime, whether he will or no, to look
with others upon the havoc he has wrought. He has been known to sit
beside the bier of his victim; he has been known to follow him to
the tomb; he has been known to betray himself at the very edge of
the grave. A grim, fantastic thing is conscience!

At last the crowd gave out a deep, hissing breath and surged forward.
They were bearing Challis Wrandall down the steps. The wall of
policemen held firm; the morbid hundreds fell back and glared with
unblinking eyes at the black thing that slowly crossed the sidewalk
and slid noiselessly into the yawning mouth of the hearse.  No
man in all that mob uncovered his head, no woman crossed herself.
Inwardly they reviled the police who kept them from seeing all that
they wanted to see. They were being cheated.

Then there was an eager shout from the foremost in the throng, and
the word went singing through the crowd, back to the outer fringe,
where men danced like so many jumping-jacks in the effort to see
above the heads of those in front.

"Here they come!" went the hoarse whisper, like the swish of the
wind.

"Stand back, please!"

"That's his mother!" cried a shrill voice, triumphantly,--even
gladly. She was the first to give the news.

"Keep back!" growled the police, lifting their clubs.

"Which one is his wife?"

"Has she come out yet?"

"Get out of my way, damn you!"

"Say, if these cops was doing their duty they'd--"

"That's what I say! No wonder they never ketch anybody."

"Say, they don't seem to be takin' it very hard. I thought they'd
be cryin' like--"

"Is that his wife?"

"Poor little thing! Ouch! You big ruffian!"

"Swell business, eh?"

"She won't be sayin' 'Where's my wanderin' boy--'"

"If we had police in this city that could ketch a street car we'd--"

"That's old man Wrandall. I've waited on him dozens o' times."

"Did they have any children?"

Up in the front rank stood a slim little thing with yellow hair and
carmined lips, wrapped in costly furs yet shivering as if chilled
to the bone. Four plain clothes men were watching her narrowly. She
was known to have been one of Challis Wrandall's associates. When
she shrank back into the crowd and made her way to the outskirts,
hurrying as if pursued by ghosts, two men followed close behind,
and kept her in sight for many blocks.

The motors and carriages rolled away, and there was left only the
policemen and the unsatiated mob. They watched the undertaker's
assistant remove the great bow of black from the door of the house.

By the end of the week the murder of Challis Wrandall was forgotten
by all save the police. The inquest was over, the law was baffled,
the city was serenely waiting for its next sensation. No one cared.

Leslie Wrandall went down to the steamer to see his sister-in-law
off for Europe.

"Good-bye, Miss Castleton," he said, as he shook the hand of the
slim young Englishwoman at parting. "Take good care of Sara. She
needs a friend, a good friend, now. Keep her over there until she
has--forgotten."




CHAPTER V

DISCUSSING A SISTER-IN-LAW


"You remember my sister-in-law, don't you, Brandy?" was the question
that Leslie Wrandall put to a friend one afternoon, as they sat
drearily in a window of one of the fashionable up-town clubs, a
little more than a year after the events described in the foregoing
chapters. Drearily, I have said, for the reason that it was Sunday,
and raining at that.

"I met Mrs. Wrandall a few years ago in Rome," said his companion,
renewing interest in a conversation that had died some time before
of its own exhaustion. "She's most attractive. I saw her but once.
I think it was at somebody's fete."

"She's returning to New York the end of the month," said Leslie.
"Been abroad for over a year. She had a villa at Nice this winter."

"I remember her quite well. I was of an age then to be particularly
sensitive to female loveliness. If I'd been staying on in Rome, I
should have screwed up the courage, I'm sure, to have asked her to
sit for me."

"Lord love you, man, she's posed for half the painters in the world,
it seems to me. Like the duchesses that Romney and those old chaps
used to paint. It occurs to me those grand old dames did nothing but
sit for portraits, year in and year out, all their lives. I don't
see where they found time to scratch up the love affairs they're
reported to have had. There always must have been some painter or
other hanging around. I remember reading that the Duchess of--I
can't remember the name--posed a hundred and sixty-nine times, for
nearly as many painters. Sara's not so bad as all that, of course,
but I don't exaggerate when I say she's been painted a dozen
times--and hung in twice as many exhibits."

"I know," said the other with a smile. "I've seen a few of them."

"The best of them all is hanging in her place up in the country,
old man. It's the one my brother liked. A Belgian fellow did it a
couple of years ago. Never been exhibited, so of course you haven't
seen it. Challis wouldn't consent to its being revealed to the
vulgar gaze, he loved it so much."

"I like that," resented Brandon Booth, with a mild glare.

"Lot of common, vulgar people do hang about picture galleries, you
will have to admit that, Brandy. They visit 'em in the winter time
to get in where it's warm, and in the summer time they go because
it's nice and shady. That's the sort I mean."

"What do you know about art or the people who--"

"I know all there is to know about it, old chap. Haven't we got
Gainsboroughs, and Turners, and Constables, and Corots hanging all
over the place? And a lot of others, too. Reynolds, Romney and
Raeburn,--the three R's. And didn't I tag along with mother to
picture dealers' shops and auctions when every blessed one of 'em
was bought? I know ALL about it, let me tell you. I can tell you what
kind of an 'atmosphere' a painting's got, with my eyes closed; and
as for 'quality' and 'luminosity' and 'broadness' and 'handling,'
I know more this minute about such things than any auctioneer in the
world. I am a past master at it, believe me. One can't go around
buying paintings with his mother without getting a liberal education
in art. She began taking me when I was ten years old. Challis
wouldn't go, so she MADE me do it. Then I always had to go back
with her when she wanted to exchange them for something else the
dealer assured her she ought to have in our collection, and which
invariably cost three times as much. No, my dear fellow, you are
very much mistaken when you say that I don't know anything about
art. I am a walking price-list of all the art this side of the
Dresden gallery. You should not forget that we are a very old New
York family. We've been collecting for over twenty years."

Both laughed. He liked Wrandall best when he affected mockery
of this sort, although he was keenly alive to a certain breath of
self-glorification in his raillery. Leslie felt a delicious sense
of security in railing at family limitations: he knew that no one
was likely to take him seriously.

"Nevertheless, your mother has some really fine paintings in the
collection," proclaimed Booth amiably, also descending to snobbishness
without really meaning to do so. He considered Velasquez to be the
superior of all those mentioned by Wrandall, and there was the end
to it, so far as he was concerned. It was ever a source of wonder
to him that Mrs. Wrandall didn't "trade in" everything else she
possessed for a single great Velasquez.

"Getting back to Sara,--my sister-in-law,--why don't you ask her to
sit for you this summer? She's not going out, you know, and time
will hang so heavily on her hands that she will even welcome another
portrait agony."

"I can't ask her to--"

"I'll do the asking, if you say the word."

"Don't be an ass."

"I'm quite willing to be one, if it will help you out, old man,"
said Leslie cheerfully.

"And make one of me as well, I suppose. She'd think me a frightful
cub after all those other fellows. After Sargent, ME! Ho, ho! She'd
laugh in my face."

"If you could paint that smile of hers, Brandy, you'd make Romney
look like an amateur. Most wonderful smile. It's a splendid idea.
Let her laugh in your face, as you say; then paint like the devil
while she's doing it, and your reputation is made for--"

"Will you have another drink?"

"No, thanks. I can change the subject without it. What time is it?"

Both looked at their watches, and put them back again without
remark to resume the interrupted contemplation of Fifth Avenue in
the waning light of a drab, drizzly day. A man in a shiny "slicker"
was pushing a sweep and shovel in the centre of the thoroughfare.
They wondered how long it would be before a motor struck him.

Brandon Booth was of an old Philadelphia family: an old and wealthy
family. Both views considered, he was qualified to walk hand in
glove with the fastidious Wrandalls. Leslie's mother was charmed
with him because she was also the mother of Vivian. The fact that
he went in for portrait painting and seemed averse to subsisting on
the generosity of his father, preferring to live by his talent, in
no way operated against him, so far as Mrs. Wrandall was concerned.
That was HIS lookout, not hers; if he elected to that sort of
thing, all well and good. He could afford to be eccentric; there
remained, in the perspective he scorned, the bulk of a huge fortune
to offset whatever idiosyncrasies he might choose to cultivate.
Some day, in spite of himself, she contended serenely, he would
be very, very rich. What could be more desirable than fame, family
and fortune all heaped together and thrust upon one exceedingly
interesting and handsome young man? For he would be famous, she was
sure of it.  Every one said that of him, even the critics, although
she didn't have much use for critics, retaining opinions of her
own that seldom agreed with theirs. It was enough for her that he
was a Booth, and knew how to behave in a drawing-room, because he
belonged there and was not lugged in by the scruff of an ill-fitting
dress-suit to pose as a Bohemian celebrity. Moreover, he was a
level-headed, well-balanced fellow in spite of his calling; which
was saying a great deal, proclaimed the mother of Vivian in opposition
to her own argument that painters never made satisfactory or even
satisfying husbands: the artistic temperament and all that sort of
thing getting in the way of compatibility.

He had been the pupil of celebrated draughtsmen and painters in
Europe, and had exhibited a sincerity of purpose that was surprising,
all things considered. The mere fact that he was not obliged to
paint in order to obtain a living, was sufficient cause for wonder
among the artists he met and studied with or under. At first they
regarded him as a youth with a fancy that soon would pass, leaving
him high and dry and safe on something steadier than Art. They
couldn't understand a rich man's son really having aspirations,
although they granted him temperament and ability. But he went
about it so earnestly, so systematically, that they were compelled
to alter the time-honoured tune and to sing praises instead of
whistling their insulting "I-told-you-sos." To the disgust of many,
he had a real purpose supported by talent, and that was what they
couldn't understand in a rich man's son. They hated to see their
traditions spoiled. The only way in which they could account for
it all was that he was an American, and Americans are always doing
the things one doesn't expect them to do, especially along grooves
that ought to be kept closed by tradition.

When he said good-bye to his European friends and masters, and set
his face toward home, they took off their hats to him, so to speak,
and agreed that he had a brilliant future, without a thought of
the legacy that one day would be his.

His studio in New York was not a fashionable resting place. It was
a work-shop. You could have tea there, of course, and you were sure
to meet people you knew and liked, but it was quite as much of a
work-shop as any you could mention. He was not a dabbler in art,
not a mere dauber of pigments: he was an ARTIST. People argued that
because he was a thoroughbred and doomed to be rich, his conscious
egotism would show itself at once in the demand for ridiculously high
prices. In that they happily were fooled, not to say disappointed.
He began by painting the portrait of a well-known society woman of
great wealth, who sat to him because she wanted to "take him up,"
and who was absolutely disconsolate when he announced, at the end
of the sittings, that his price was five hundred dollars. She would
not believe her ears.

"Why, my dear Brandon, you will be ruined--utterly ruined--if it
becomes known that you ask less than five thousand," she had cried,
almost in tears. "No one will come to you."

He had smiled. "A master's price is for a master, not for a tyro.
If they want to pay five thousand dollars for a portrait, I can
recommend a dozen or more gentlemen whose work is worth it. Mine
isn't. Some day I hope to be able to say five thousand with a great
deal more assurance than I now say five hundred, Mrs. Wheeler, but
it won't be until I have courage, not nerve."

"But NOBODY will sit for a five hundred dollar portrait," she
expostulated. "Really, Brandon, I prefer to pay five thousand. I
can't--I simply cannot tell people that I paid only five--"

"Will you give six hundred?" he asked, his smile broadening.

"Absurd!"

"Seven hundred?"

"Why, it sounds as if you were jewing me up, not I trying to jew
you down," she cried, dismayed.

"That's the point," he said, with mock gravity. "If my price isn't
what it ought to be in your opinion, it is only fair that I should
make concessions. My picture is worth five hundred dollars, but I
am willing to do a little better than that by you. I will make it
seven-fifty to you, but not a cent more."

"Can't I jew you up any higher, dear boy?"

"No," with a smile; "but if you will consent to sit to me ten years
from now, I promise faithfully to ask five thousand of you without
a blush."

"Ah, but ten years from now I should blush to even think of having
my portrait painted."

"Ten years will make no change in you," said he gallantly, "but I
expect them to make quite another artist of me."

And so his price was established for the time being. He offset
the chilling effect of the low figure by deliberately declining
commissions to paint women who fell below a rather severe standard
of personal attractiveness. Gross women were not allowed to crowd
his canvases; ugly ones who succeeded in tempting him were surprised
to find how ugly they really were when the portrait was finished.
He made it a point never to lie about a woman, not even on canvas.
It made him very unpopular with certain ladies who wanted to be
lied about--on canvas.

As the result of his rather independent attitude, he had more
commissions than he could fill. When it got about that he cared to
paint only attractive women, his studio was besieged by ladies of
a curious turn of mind. If they discovered that he was willing to
paint them, they blissfully dropped the matter and went happily on
their way. If they found that his time was so fully occupied that
he could not paint them they urged him to reconsider--even offering
to quadruple his price if he would only "do" them. One exceedingly
plain woman, who couldn't be reconciled to Nature, offered him
twenty thousand dollars if he would paint her for the Metropolitan
Museum. Another asked him if he was a pupil of Gainsborough. Finding
that he was not, she asked WHY not, with all the money he had at
his command.

He had been in New York for the better part of two years at the
time he is introduced into this narrative. Years of his life had
been spent abroad, yet he was not a stranger in a strange land
when he took up his residence in Gotham. Society opened its arms
to him. It was like a home-coming. Had he been a bridge player,
his coronation might have been complete.

Booth was thirty,--perhaps a year or two older; tall, dark and
good-looking. The air of the thoroughbred marked him. He did not
affect loose flowing cravats and baggy trousers, nor was he careless
about his finger-nails. He was simply the ordinary, everyday sort
of chap you would meet in Fifth Avenue during parade hours, and
you would take a second look at him because of his face and manner
but not on account of his dress. Some of his ancestors came over
ahead of the Mayflower, but he did not gloat.

Leslie Wrandall was his closest friend and harshest critic. It
didn't really matter to Booth what Leslie said of his paintings:
he quite understood that he didn't know anything about them.

"When does Mrs. Wrandall return?" asked the painter, after a long
period of silence spent in contemplation of the gleaming pavement
beyond the club's window.

"That's queer," said Leslie, looking up. "I was thinking of Sara
myself. She sails next week. I've had a letter asking me to open her
house in the country. Her place is about two miles from father's.
It hasn't been opened in two years. Her father built it fifteen or
twenty years ago, and left it to her when he died. She and Challis
spent several summers there."

"Vivian took me through it one afternoon last summer."

"It must have been quite as much of a novelty to her as it was to
you, old chap," said Leslie gloomily.

"What do you mean?"

"Vivian's a bit of a snob. She never liked the place because old
man Gooch built it out of worsteds. She never went there."

"But the old man's been dead for years."

"That doesn't matter. The fact is, Vivian didn't quite take to Sara
until after--well, until after Challis died. We're dreadful snobs,
Brandy, the whole lot of us. Sara was quite good enough for a much
better man than my brother. She really couldn't help the worsteds,
you know. I'm very fond of her, and always have been. We're pals.
'Gad, it was a fearful slap at the home folks when Challis justified
Sara by getting snuffed out the way he did."

Booth made an attempt to change the subject, but Wrandall got back
to it.

"Since then we've all been exceedingly sweet on Sara. Not because
we want to be, mind you, but because we're afraid she'll marry some
chap who wouldn't be acceptable to us."

"I should consider that a very neat way out of it," said Booth
coldly.

"Not at all. You see, Challis was fond of Sara, in spite of everything.
He left a will and under it she came in for all he had.  As that
includes a third interest in our extremely refined and irreproachable
business, it would be a deuce of a trick on us if she married one
of the common people and set him up amongst us, willy-nilly. We
don't want strange bed-fellows. We're too snug--and, I might say,
too smug. Down in her heart, mother is saying to herself it would
be just like Sara to get even with us by doing just that sort of
a trick. Of course, Sara is rich enough without accepting a sou
under the will, but she's a canny person. She hasn't handed it back
to us on a silver platter, with thanks; still, on the other hand,
she refuses to meddle. She makes us feel pretty small.  She won't
sell out to us. She just sits tight. That's what gets under the
skin with mother."

"I wouldn't say that, Les, if I were in your place."

"It is a rather priggish thing to say, isn't it?"

"Rather."

"You see, I'm the only one who really took sides with Sara. I forget
myself sometimes. She was such a brick, all those years."

Booth was silent for a moment, noting the reflective look in his
companion's eyes.

"I suppose the police haven't given up the hope that sooner or
later the--er--the woman will do something to give herself away,"
said he.

"They don't take any stock in my theory that she made way with
herself the same night. I was talking with the chief yesterday. He
says that any one who had wit to cover up her tracks as she did,
is not the kind to make way with herself. Perhaps he's right. It
sounds reasonable. 'Gad, I felt sorry for the poor girl they had
up last spring. She went through the third degree, if ever any one
did, but, by Jove, she came out of it all right. The Ashtley girl,
you remember. I've dreamed about that girl, Brandy, and what they
put her through. It's a sort of nightmare to me, even when I'm
awake.  Oh, they've questioned others as well, but she was the only
one to have the screws twisted in just that way."

"Where is she now?"

"She's comfortable enough now. When I wrote to Sara about what she'd
been through, she settled a neat bit of money on her, and she'll
never want for anything. She's out West somewhere, with her mother
and sisters. I tell you, Sara's a wonder. She's got a heart of
gold."

"I look forward to meeting her, old man."

"I was with her for a few weeks this winter. In Nice, you know.
Vivian stayed on for a week, but mother had to get to the baths.
'Gad, I believe she hated to go. Sara's got a most adorable
girl staying with her. A daughter of Colonel Castleton, and she's
connected in some way with the Murgatroyds--old Lord Murgatroyd,
you know. I think her mother was a niece of the old boy. Anyhow,
mother and Vivian have taken a great fancy to her. That's proof of
the pudding."

"I think Vivian mentioned a companion of some sort."

"You wouldn't exactly call her a companion," said Leslie. "She's
got money to burn, I take it. Quite keeps up with Sara in making it
fly, and that's saying a good deal for her resources. I think it's
a pose on her part, this calling herself a companion. An English
joke, eh?  As a matter of fact, she's an old friend of Sara's
and my brother's too. Knew them in England. Most delightful girl.
Oh, I say, old man, she's the one for you to paint." Leslie waxed
enthusiastic. "A type, a positive type. Never saw such eyes in all
my life. Dammit, they haunt you. You dream about 'em."

"You seem to be hard hit," said Booth indifferently. He was watching
the man in the "slicker" through moody eyes.

"Oh, nothing like that," disclaimed Leslie, with unnecessary promptness.
"But if I were given to that sort of thing, I'd be bowled over in
a minute. Positively adorable face. If I thought you had it in you
to paint a thing as it really is, I'd commission you myself to do
a miniature for me, just to have it around where I could pick it
up when I liked and hold it between my hands, just as I've often
wanted to hold the real thing."

"Come, come! You're dotty about her."

"Get Vivian to tell you about her," said Leslie sweepingly. "Come
down and have dinner with me to-night. She'll bear out--"

"I'll take your word for it. Thanks for the bid, but I can't come.
Dining at the Ritz with Joey and Linda. I think I'll be off."

He stretched himself, took the final, reluctant look of the artist
at the "slicker" man, and moved away. Leslie called after him:

"Wait till you see her."

"All right. I'll wait."

Sara Wrandall returned to New York at the end of the month,
and Leslie met her at the dock, as he did on an occasion fourteen
months earlier. Then she came in on a fierce gale from the wintry
Atlantic; this time the air was soft and balmy and sweet with the
kindness of spring. It was May and the sea was blue, the land was
green.

Again she went to the small, exclusive hotel near the Park. Her
apartment was closed, the butler and his wife and all of their
hastily recruited company being in the country, awaiting her arrival
from town. Leslie attended to everything. He lent his resourceful
man-servant and his motor to his lovely sister-in-law, and saw to
it that his mother and Vivian sent flowers to the ship. Redmond
Wrandall called at the hotel immediately after banking hours,
kissed his daughter-in-law, and delivered an ultimatum second-hand
from the power at home: she was to come to dinner and bring Miss
Castleton. A little quiet family dinner, you know, because they
were all in mourning, he said in conclusion, vaguely realising all
the while that it really wasn't necessary to supply the information,
but, for the life of him, unable to think of anything else to say
under the circumstances. Somehow it seemed to him that while Sara
was in black she was not in mourning in the same sense that the
rest of them were. It seemed only right to acquaint her with the
conditions in his household. And he knew that he deserved the scowl
that Leslie bestowed upon him.

Sara accepted, much to his surprise and gratification. He had been
rather dubious about it. It would not have surprised him in the
least if she had declined the invitation, feeling, as he did, that
he had in a way come to her with a white flag or an olive branch
or whatever it is that a combative force utilises when it wants to
surrender in the cause of humanity.

Leslie was a very observing person. It might have been said of him
that he was always on the lookout for the things that most people
were unlikely to notice: the trivial things that really were
important. He not only took in his father's amiable blunder, but
caught the curious expression in Hetty's dark blue eyes, and the
sharp almost inaudible catch of her breath. The gleam was gone
in an instant, but it made an impression on him. He found himself
wondering if the girl was a snob as well as the rest of them.
The look in her eyes betrayed unmistakable surprise and--yes, he
was quite sure of it--dismay when Sara accepted the invitation to
dine.  Was it possible that the lovely Miss Castleton considered
herself--but no! Of course it couldn't be that. The Wrandalls were
good enough for dukes and duchesses. Still he could not get beyond
the fact that he HAD seen the look of disapproval. 'Gad, thought
he, it was almost a look of appeal. He made up his mind, as he
stood there chatting with her, that he would find out from Vivian
what his mother had done to create an unpleasant estimate of
the family in the eyes of this gentle, refined cousin of old Lord
Murgatroyd.

He was quite as quick to detect the satirical smile in Sara's frank,
amused eyes as she graciously accepted the invitation to the home
whose doors had only been half-open to her in the past. It scratched
his pride a bit to think of the opinion she must have of the family,
and he was inexpressibly glad that she could not consistently class
him with the others. He found himself feeling a bit sorry for the
old gentleman, and hoped that he missed the touch of irony in Sara's
voice.

Old Mr. Wrandall floundered from one invitation to another.

"Of course, Sara, my dear, you will want to go out to the cemetery
to-morrow, I shall be only too ready to accompany you. We have
erected a splendid--"

"No, thank you, Mr. Wrandall," she interrupted gently. "I shall
not go to the cemetery."

Leslie intervened. "You understand, don't you, father?" he said,
rather out of patience.

The old gentleman lowered his head. "Yes, yes," he hastened to
say.  "Quite so, quite so. Then we may expect you at eight, Sara,
and you, Miss Castleton. Mrs. Wrandall is looking forward to seeing
you again. It isn't often she takes a liking to--ahem! I beg your
pardon, Leslie?"

"I was just going to suggest that we move along, dad. I fancy you
want to get at your trunks, Sara. Smuggled a few things through,
eh?  Women never miss a chance to get a couple of dozen dresses
through, as you'll discover if you become a real American, Miss
Castleton.  It's in the blood."

Mr. Wrandall fell into another trap. "Now please remember that we
are to dine very informally," he hastened to say, his mind on the
smuggled gowns. It was his experience that gowns that escaped duty
invariably were "creations."

Leslie got him away.

As soon as they were alone, Hetty turned to her friend.

"Oh, Sara, can't you go without me? Tell them that I am ill--suddenly
ill. I--I don't think it right or honourable of me to accept--"

Sara shook her head, and the words died on the girl's lips.

"You must play the game, Hetty."

"It's--very hard," murmured the other, her face very white and
bleak.

"I know, my dear," said Sara gently.

"If they should ever find out," gasped the girl, suddenly giving
way to the dread that had been lying dormant all these months.

"They will never know the truth unless you choose to enlighten
them," said Sara, putting her arm about the girl's shoulders and
drawing her close.

"You never cease to be wonderful, Sara,--so very wonderful," cried
the girl, with a look of worship in her eyes.

Sara regarded her in silence for a moment, reflecting. Then, with
a swift rush of tears to her eyes, she cried fiercely:

"You must never, never tell me all that happened, Hetty! You must
not speak it with your own lips."

Hetty's eyes grew dark with pain and wonder.

"That is the thing I can't understand in you, Sara," she said
slowly.

"We must not speak of it!"

Hetty's bosom heaved. "Speak of it!" she cried, absolute agony in
her voice. "Have I not kept it locked in my heart since that awful
day--"

"Hush!"

"I shall go mad if I cannot talk with you about--"

"No, no! It is the forbidden subject! I know all that I should
know--all that I care to know. We have not said so much as this
in months--in ages, it seems. Let sleeping dogs lie. We are better
off, my dear. I could not touch your lips again."

"I--I can't bear the thought of that!"

"Kiss me now, Hetty."

"I could die for you, Sara," cried Hetty, as she impulsively obeyed
the command.

"I mean that you shall live for me," said Sara, smiling through
her tears. "How silly of me to cry. It must be the room we are in.
These are the same rooms, dear, that you came to on the night we
met. Ah, how old I feel!"

"Old? You say that to me? I am ages and ages older than you," cried
Hetty, the colour coming back to her soft cheeks.

"You are twenty-three."

"And you are twenty-eight."

Sara had a far away look in her eyes. "About your size and figure,"
said she, and Hetty did not comprehend.




CHAPTER VI

SOUTHLOOK


Sara Wrandall's house in the country stood on a wooded knoll
overlooking the Sound. It was rather remotely located, so far as
neighbours were concerned. Her father, Sebastian Gooch, shrewdly
foresaw the day when land in this particular section of the suburban
world would return dollars for the pennies, and wisely bought
thousands of acres: woodland, meadowland, beachland and hills,
inserted between the environs of New York City and the rich towns
up the coast. Years afterward he built a commodious summer home on
the choicest point that his property afforded, named it Southlook,
and transformed that particular part of his wilderness into
a millionaire's paradise, where he could dawdle and putter to his
heart's content, where he could spend his time and his money with
a prodigality that came so late in life to him that he made waste
of both in his haste to live down a rather parsimonious past.

Two miles and a half away, in the heart of a scattered colony of
purse-proud New Yorkers, was the country home of the Wrandalls, an
imposing place and older by far than Southlook. It had descended
from well-worn and time-stained ancestors to Redmond Wrandall,
and, with others of its kind, looked with no little scorn upon the
modern, mushroom structures that sprouted from the seeds of trade.
There was no friendship between the old and the new. Each had
recourse to a bitter contempt for the other, though consolation
was small in comparison.

It was in the wooded by-ways of this despised domain that Challis
Wrandall and Sara, the earthly daughter of Midas, met and loved and
defied all things supernal, for matches are made in heaven. Their
marriage did not open the gates of Nineveh. Sebastian Gooch's
paradise was more completely ostracised than it was before the
disaster. The Wrandalls spoke of it as a disaster.

Clearly the old merchant was not over-pleased with his daughter's
choice, a conclusion permanently established by the alteration he
made in his will a year or two after the marriage. True, he left
the vast estate to his beloved daughter Sara, but he fastened a
stout string to it, and with this string her hands were tied. It
must have occurred to him that Challis was a profligate in more ways
than one, for he deliberately stipulated in his will that Sara was
not to sell a foot of the ground until a period of twenty years had
elapsed. A very polite way, it would seem, of making his investment
safe in the face of considerable odds.

He lived long enough after the making of his will, I am happy to
relate, to find that he had made no mistake. As he preceded his
son-in-law into the Great Beyond by a scant three years, it readily
may be seen that he wrought too well by far. Seventeen unnecessary
years of proscription remained, and he had not intended them for
Sara ALONE. He was not afraid of Sara, but for her.

When the will was read and the condition revealed, Challis Wrandall
took it in perfect good humour. He had the grace to proclaim
in the bosom of his father's family that the old gentleman was a
father-in-law to be proud of. "A canny old boy," he had announced
with his most engaging smile, quite free from rancour or resentment.
Challis was well acquainted with himself.

And so the acres were strapped together snugly and firmly, without
so much as a town-lot protruding.

So impressed was Challis by the farsightedness of his father-in-law
that he forthwith sat him down and made a will of his own. He would
not have it said that Sara's father did a whit better by her than
he would do. He left everything he possessed to his wife, but put
no string to it, blandly implying that all danger would be past
when she came into possession. There was a sort of grim humour in
the way he managed to present himself to view as the real and ready
source of peril.

Among certain of the Wrandall clan there was serious talk of
contesting the will. It was a distinct shock to all of them. Some
one made bold to assert that Challis was not in his right mind at
the time it was executed. For that matter, a couple of uncles on
his mother's side were of the broad opinion that he never had been
mentally adequate.

During a family conference four days after the funeral, Leslie
launched forth at some length and with considerable heat, expressing
an opinion that met with small favour at the outset but which had
its results later on.

"Why," he declaimed, standing before the fireplace with his hands
in his pockets, "if Sara dreamed that we even so much as contemplate
making a fuss about Chal's will, she'd up and chuck the whole blooming
legacy in our faces, and be glad to do it. She's got plenty of her
own. She doesn't need the little that Challis left her. Then, what
would we look like, tell me that? What would the world say?  Why,
it would say that she didn't think our money was clean enough to
mix with old man Gooch's. She'd throw it in our faces and the whole
town would snicker."

"Figuratively speaking, young man, figuratively speaking," said
one of the uncles, a stockholder and director.

"What do you mean by that?"

"That she--ahem! That she couldn't actually THROW it."

"I'm not so literal as you, Uncle George."

"Then why use the word THROW?"

"Of course, Uncle George, I don't mean to say she'd have it reduced
to gold coin and stand off and take shots at us. You understand
that, don't you?"

"Leslie," put in his father, "you have a most distressing way
of--er--putting it. Your Uncle George is not so dense as all that."

"I didn't use the word 'throw' in the first place," said Leslie,
with a shrug. "I said 'chuck.'"

"I distinctly heard you use the word 'throw,'" said Uncle George,
very red in the face.

"It was on the second occasion, George," said Mrs. Wrandall, loyal
to Leslie.

"In either case," said her son, "we'd be made ridiculous. That's
the long and short of it. Even if she HANDED it to us on a silver
plate,--figuratively speaking, Uncle George,--we'd be made to look
like thirty cents."

"Well, I'm damn--" began Uncle George, almost forgetting where he
was, but remembering in time. He was afraid to utter a word for
the next ten minutes, and Leslie was spared the interruptions.

It was decided that the will should stand. Later on, the alarming
prospect of Sara's perfect right to marry again came up to mar the
peace of mind of all the Wrandalls, and it grew to be horribly real
without a single move on her part to warrant the fears they were
encouraging.

Sara and Hetty did not stay long in town. The newspapers announced
the return of Challis Wrandall's widow and reporters sought her
out for interviews. The old interest was revived and columns were
printed about the murder at Burton's Inn, with sharp editorial
comments on the failure of the police to clear up the mystery.

The woods were green and the earth was redolent of rich spring
odours; wild flowers peeped shyly from the leaf-strewn soil in the
shadow of the trees; some, more bold than others, came down to
the roadway, and from the banks and hedges smiled saucily upon all
who passed; the hillsides were like spotless carpets, the meadows
a riot of clover hues. The world was light with the life of the
new-born year, for who shall say that the year does not begin with
the birth of spring? May! May, when the earth begins to bear, not
January when it sets out in sorrow to bury its dead. New Year's
day it is, when the first tiny flower of spring comes to life and
smiles oh the face of Mother Earth, and the sun is warm with the
love of a gentle father.

"I shall ask Leslie down for the week-end," said Sara, the third
day after their arrival in the country. The house was huge and
lonely, and time hung rather heavily despite the glorious uplift
of spring.

Hetty looked up quickly from her book. A look of dismay flickered
in her eyes for an instant and then gave way to the calmness that
had come to dwell in their depths of late. Her lips parted in the
sudden impulse to cry out against the plan, but she checked the
words. For a moment, her dark, questioning eyes studied the face
of her benefactress; then, as if nothing had been revealed to her,
she allowed her gaze to drift pensively out toward the sunset sea.

They were sitting on the broad verandah overlooking the Sound. The
dusk of evening was beginning to steal over the earth. She laid
her book aside.

"Will you telephone in to him after dinner, Hetty?" went on Sara,
after a long period of silence.

Again Hetty started. This time a look of actual pain flashed in
her eyes.

"Would not a note by post be more certain to find him in the--"
she began hurriedly.

"I dislike writing notes," said Sara calmly. "Of course, dear, if
you feel that you'd rather not telephone to him, I can--"

"I dare say I am finicky, Sara," apologised Hetty in quick contrition.
"Of course, he is your brother. I should remem--"

"My brother-in-law, dear," said Sara, a trifle too literally.

"He will come often to your house," went on Hetty rapidly. "I must
make the best of it."

"He is your friend, Hetty. He admires you."

"I cannot see him through your eyes, Sara."

"But he IS charming and agreeable, you'll admit," persisted the
other.

"He is very kind, and he is devoted to you. I should like him for
that."

"You have no cause for disliking him."

"I do not dislike him. I--I am--Oh, you always have been so
thoughtful, so considerate, Sara, I can't understand your failing
to see how hard it is for me to--to--well, to endure his open-hearted
friendship."

Sara was silent for a moment. "You draw a pretty fine line, Hetty,"
she said gently.

Hetty flushed. "You mean that there is little to choose between
wife and brother? That isn't quite fair. You know everything, he
knows nothing. I wear a mask for him; you have seen into the very
heart of me. It isn't the same."

Sara came over and stood beside the girl's chair. After a moment of
indecision, she laid her hand on Hetty's shoulder. The girl looked
up, the ever-recurring question in her eyes.

"We haven't spoken of--of these things in many months, Hetty."

"Not since Mrs. Wrandall and Vivian came to Nice. I was upset--dreadfully
upset then, Sara. I don't know how I managed to get through with
it."

"But you managed it," pronounced Sara. Her fingers seemed to tighten
suddenly on the girl's shoulder. "I think we were quite wonderful,
both of us. It wasn't easy for me."

"Why did we come back to New York, Sara?" burst out Hetty, clasping
her friend's hand as if suddenly spurred by terror. "We were happy
over there. And free!"

"Listen, my dear," said Sara, a hard note growing in her voice:
"this is my home. I do not love it, but I can see no reason for
abandoning it. That is why we came back to New York."

Hetty pressed her friend's hand to her lips. "Forgive me," she
cried impulsively. "I shouldn't have complained. It was detestable."

"Besides," went on Sara evenly, "you were quite free to remain on
the other side. I left it to you."

"You gave me a week to decide," said Hetty, in a hurried manner of
speaking. "I--I took but twenty-four hours--less than that. Over
night, you remember. I love you, Sara. I could not leave you. All
that night I could feel you pulling at my heart-strings, pulling
me closer and closer, and holding me. You were in your room, I in
mine, and yet all the time you seemed to be bending over me in the
darkness, urging me to stay with you and love you and be loved by
you. It couldn't have been a dream."

"It was not a dream," said Sara, with a queer smile.

"You DO love me?" tensely.

"I DO love you," was the firm answer. Sara was staring out across
the water, her eyes big and as black as night itself. She seemed
to be looking far beyond the misty lights that bobbled with nearby
schooners, far beyond the yellow mass on the opposite shore where
a town lay cradled in the shadows, far into the fast darkening sky
that came up like a wall out of the east.

Hetty's fingers tightened in a warmer clasp. Unconsciously perhaps,
Sara's grip on the girl's shoulder tightened also: unconsciously,
for her thoughts were far away. The younger woman's pensive gaze
rested on the peaceful waters below, taking in the slow approach of
the fog that was soon to envelop the land. Neither spoke for many
minutes: inscrutable thinkers, each a prey to thoughts that leaped
backward to the beginning and took up the puzzle at its inception.

"I wonder--" began Hetty, her eyes narrowing with the intensity of
thought. She did not complete the sentence.

Sara answered the unspoken question. "It will never be different
from what it is now, unless you make it so."

Hetty started. "How could you have known what I was thinking?" she
cried in wonder.

"It is what you are always thinking, my dear. You are always asking
yourself when will I turn against you."

"Sara!"

"Your own intelligence should supply the answer to all the questions
you are asking of yourself. It is too late for me to turn against
you." She abruptly removed her hand from Hetty's shoulder and walked
to the edge of the verandah. For the first time, the English girl
was conscious of pain. She drew her arm up and cringed. She pulled
the light scarf about her bare shoulders.

The butler appeared in the doorway.

"The telephone, if you please, Miss Castleton. Mr. Leslie Wrandall
is calling."

The girl stared. "For me, Watson?"

"Yes, Miss. I forgot to say that he called up this afternoon while
you were out," very apologetically, with a furtive glance at Mrs.
Wrandall, who had turned.

"Loss of memory, Watson, is a fatal affliction," she said, with a
smile.

"Yes, Mrs. Wrandall. I don't see 'ow it 'appened."

"It is not likely to happen again."

"No, madam."

Hetty had risen, visibly agitated.

"What shall I say to him, Sara?" she cried.

"Apparently it is he who has something to say to you," said the
other, still smiling. "Wait and see what it is. Please don't neglect
to say that we'd like to have him over Sunday."

"A box of flowers has just come up from the station for you, Miss,"
said Watson.

Hetty was very white as she passed into the house. Mrs. Wrandall
resumed her contemplation of the fog-screened Sound.

"Shall I fetch you a wrap, ma'am?" asked Watson, hesitating.

"I am coming in, Watson. Open the box of flowers for Miss Castleton.
Is there a fire in the library?"

"Yes, Mrs. Wrandall."

"Mr. Leslie will be out on Saturday. Tell Mrs. Conkling."

"The evening train, ma'am?"

"No. The eleven-thirty. He will be here for luncheon."

When Hetty hurried into the library a few minutes later, her
manner was that of one considerably disturbed by something that
has transpired almost on the moment. Her cheeks were flushed and
her eyes were reflectors of a no uncertain distress of mind. Mrs.
Wrandall was standing before the fireplace, an exquisite figure
in the slinky black evening gown which she affected in these days.
Her perfectly modelled neck and shoulders gleamed like pink marble
in the reflected glow of the burning logs. She wore no jewellery,
but there was a single white rose in her dark hair, where it had
been placed by the whimsical Hetty an hour earlier as they left
the dinner table.

"He is coming out on the eleven-thirty, Sara," said the girl
nervously, "unless you will send the motor in for him. The body of
his car is being changed and it's in the shop. He must have been
jesting when he said he would pay for the petrol--I should have
said gasoline."

Sara laughed. "You will know him better, my dear," she said. "Leslie
is very light-hearted."

"He suggested bringing a friend," went on Hetty hurriedly. "A Mr.
Booth, the portrait painter."

"I met him in Italy. He is charming. You will like HIM, too, Hetty."
The emphasis did not escape notice.

"It seems that he is spending a fortnight in the village, this Mr.
Booth, painting spring lambs for rest and recreation, Mr. Leslie
says."

"Then he is at our very gates," said Sara, looking up suddenly.

"I wonder if he can be the man I saw yesterday at the bridge,"
mused Hetty. "Is he tall?"

"I really can't say. He's rather vague. It was six or seven years
ago."

"It was left that Mr. Wrandall is to come out on the eleven-thirty,"
explained Hetty. "I thought you wouldn't like sending either of
the motors in."

"And Mr. Booth?"

"We are to send for him after Mr. Wrandall arrives. He is stopping
at the inn, wherever that may be."

"Poor fellow!" sighed Sara, with a grimace. "I am sure he will like
us immensely if he has been stopping at the inn."

Hetty stood staring down at the blazing logs for a full minute
before giving expression to the thought that troubled her.

"Sara," she said, meeting her friend's eyes with a steady light
in her own, "why did Mr. Wrandall ask for me instead of you? It is
you he is coming to visit, not me. It is your house. Why should--"

"My dear," said Sara glibly, "I am merely his sister-in-law. It
wouldn't be necessary to ask me if he should come. He knows he is
welcome."

"Then why should he feel called upon to--"

"Some men like to telephone, I suppose," said the other coolly.

"I wonder if you will ever understand how I feel about--about
certain things, Sara."

"What, for instance?"

"Well, his very evident interest in me," cried the girl hotly. "He
sends me flowers,--this is the second box this week,--and he is so
kind, so VERY friendly, Sara, that I can't bear it--I really can't."

Mrs. Wrandall stared at her. "You can't very well send him about
his business," she said, "unless he becomes more than friendly.
Now, can you?"

"But it seems so--so horrible, so beastly," groaned the girl.

Sara faced her squarely. "See here, Hetty," she said levelly, "we
have made our bed, you and I. We must lie in it--together. If Leslie
Wrandall chooses to fall in love with you, that is his affair, not
ours. We must face every condition. In plain words, we must play
the game."

"What could be more appalling than to have him fall in love with
me?"

"The other way 'round would be more dramatic, I should say."

"Good God, Sara!" cried the girl in horror. "How can you even speak
of such a thing?"

"After all, why shouldn't--" began Sara, but stopped in the middle
of her suggestion, with the result that it had its full effect without
being uttered in so many cold-blooded words. The girl shuddered.

"I wish, Sara, you would let me unburden myself completely to you,"
she pleaded, seizing her friend's hands. "You have forbidden me--"

Sara jerked her hands away. Her eyes flashed. "I do not want to
hear it," she cried fiercely. "Never, never! Do you understand?
It is your secret. I will not share it with you. I should hate you
if I knew everything. As it is, I love you because you are a woman
who suffered at the hand of one who made me suffer. There is nothing
more to say. Don't bring up the subject again. I want to be your
friend for ever, not your confidante. There is a distinction. You
may be able to see how very marked it is in our case, Hetty. What
one does not know, seldom hurts."

"But I want to justify myself--"

"It isn't necessary," cut in the other so peremptorily that the
girl's eyes spread into a look of anger. Whereupon Sara Wrandall
threw her arm about her and drew her down beside her on the
chaise-longue. "I didn't mean to be harsh," she cried. "We must
not speak of the past, that's all. The future is not likely to hurt
us, dear. Let us avoid the past."

"The future!" sighed the girl, staring blankly before her.

"To appreciate what it is to be," said the other, "you have but to
think of what it might have been."

"I know," said Hetty, in a low voice. "And yet I sometimes wonder
if--"

Sara interrupted. "You are paying me, dear, instead of the law,"
she said gently. "I am not a harsh creditor, am I?"

"My life belongs to you. I give it cheerfully, even gladly."

"So you have said before. Well, if it belongs to me, you might at
least permit me to develop it as I would any other possession. I
take it as an investment. It will probably fluctuate."

"Now you are jesting!"

"Perhaps," said Sara laconically.

The next morning Hetty set forth for her accustomed tramp over the
roads that wound through the estate. Sara, the American, dawdled
at home, resenting the chill spring drizzle that did not in the
least discourage the Englishwoman. The mistress of the house and
of the girl's destiny stood in the broad French window watching her
as she strode springily, healthily down the maple lined avenue in
the direction of the gates. The gardeners doffed their caps to her
as she passed, and also looked after her with surreptitious glances.

There was a queer smile on Sara's lips that remained long after the
girl was lost to view beyond the lodge. It was still on her lips
but gone from her eyes as she paused beside the old English table
to bury her nose in one of the gorgeous roses that Leslie had sent
out to Hetty the day before. They were all about the room, dozens
of them. The girl had insisted on having them downstairs instead of
in her own little sitting-room, for which they plainly were intended.

A nasty sea turn had brought lowering grey skies and a dreary,
enveloping mist that never quite assumed the dignity of a drizzle
and yet blew wet and cold to the very marrow of the bones. Hetty
was used to such weather. Her English blood warmed to it. As she
strode briskly across the meadow-land road in the direction of the
woods that lay ahead, a soft ruddy glow crept up to her cheeks,
and a sparkle of joy into her eyes. She walked strongly, rapidly.
Her straight, lithe young figure was a joyous thing to behold.
High boots, short skirt, a loose jacket and a broad felt hat made
up her costume. She was graceful, adorable; a young, healthy,
beautiful creature in whom the blood surged quickly, strongly: the
type of woman men are wont to classify as "ineffably feminine,"
though why we should differentiate is no small mystery unless
there really is such a thing as one woman possessing an adorably
feminine quality denied to her sisters. Be that as it may, there
IS a distinction and men pride themselves on knowing it. Hetty was
alluringly feminine.  Leaving out the matter of morals, whatever
they are, and coming right up to her as an example of her sex, pure
and simple if you please, we are bound to say that she was perfect.
The best thing we can say of Challis Wrandall is that he took the
same view of her that we should, and fell in love with her. He
would have married her if he could, there isn't much doubt as to
that, no matter what she had been before he knew her or what she
was at the time of his discovery. No more is it to be considered
unique that his brother should have experienced a similar interest
in her, knowing even less.

She was the sort of girl one falls in love with and remembers it
the rest of his life.

Take her now, for instance, as she swings along the highway, fresh,
trim and graceful, her chin uptilted, her cheeks warm, her eyes
clear and as blue as sapphires, and we experience the most intense,
unreasoning desire to be near her, at her side, where hands could
touch her and the very spell of her creep out over one to make a
man of him.

The kind of woman one wants to draw close to him because his heart
is sweet.

She had the blood of a fellow creature on her hands--the blood of
one of us--and yet we men will overlook one commandment for another.
It is a matter of choice.

What of her present position in the house and in the heart of the
one woman who of all those we know is abnormally unfeminine in that
she subordinates the natural and instinctive animosity of woman
toward another who robs her of a husband, no matter how unworthy
or how hateful he may have been to her behind the screen with which
she hides her sores from the world. The answer is ready: Hetty
was a slave bound to an extraordinary condition. There had been no
coercion on the part of Challis Wrandall's wife; no actual restraint
had been set upon the girl. The situation was a plain one from every
point of view: Hetty owed her life to Sara, she would have paid
with her life's blood the debt she owed. It had become perfectly
natural for her to consider herself a willing, grateful prisoner--a
prisoner on parole. She would not, could not abuse the parole. She
loved her gaoler with a love that knew no bounds; she loved the
walls Sara had thrown up about her; she was content to live and
die in the luxurious cell, attended by love and kindness and mercy.
After all, Hetty was even more feminine than we seem able to convey
in words.

Not in that she lacked in pride or sensitiveness, but that she
possessed to a self-satisfying degree the ability to subordinate
both of these to a loyalty that had no bounds. There were fine
feelings in Hetty. She was honest with herself. She did not look
beyond her present horizon for brighter skies. They were as bright
as they could ever be, of that she was sure; her hopes lay within
the small circumference that Sara Wrandall made possible for her.
She knew that her peril, her ruin lay in the desire to step outside
that narrow circle, for out there the world was cold and merciless.

She lived as one charmed by some powerful influence, and was content.
Not once had the fear entered her soul that Sara would turn against
her. Her trust in Wrandall's wife was infinite. In her simple,
devoted heart she could feel no prick of dread so far as the present
was concerned. The past was dreadful, but it was the past, and its
loathsomeness was moderated by subtle contrast with the present.
As for the future, it belonged to Sara Wrandall. It was safe.

If Sara were to decide that she must be given up to the law, all
well and good. She could meet her fate with a smile for Sara, and
with love in her heart. She could pay in full if the demand was
made by the wife of the man she had left in the grim little upstairs
room at Burton's Inn on that never-to-be-forgotten night in March.

The one great, inexplicable mystery to her was the heart of Sara
Wrandall. She could not fathom it.

She could understand her own utter subjection to the will of the
other woman; she could explain it satisfactorily to herself, and
she could have explained it to the world. Self-preservation in the
beginning, self-surrender as time went on, self-sacrifice as the
prerogative.

And so it was, on this grey spring day, that she gazed undaunted at
the world, with the shadows all about her, and hummed a sprightly
tune through warm red lips that were kissed by the morning mist.

She came to the bridge by the mill, long since deserted and now
a thing of ruin and decay. A man in knickerbockers stood leaning
against the rail, idly gazing down at the trickling stream below.
The brier pipe that formed the circuit between hand and lips sent
up soft blue coils to float away on the drizzle.

She passed behind him, with a single furtive, curious glance at
his handsome, undisturbed profile, and in that glance recognised
him as the man she had seen the day before.

When she was a dozen rods away, the tall man turned his face from
the stream and sent after her the long-restrained look. There was
something akin to cautiousness in that look of his, as if he were
afraid that she might turn her head suddenly and catch him at it.
Something began stirring in his heart, the nameless something that
awakens when least expected. He felt the subtle, sweet femininity
of her as she passed. It lingered with him as he looked.

She turned the bend in the road a hundred yards away. For many
minutes he studied the stream below without really seeing it.
Then he straightened up, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and set
off slowly in her wake, although he had been walking in quite the
opposite direction when he came to the bridge,--and on a mission
of some consequence, too.

There was the chance that he would meet her coming back.




CHAPTER VII

A FAITHFUL CRAYON-POINT


Leslie Wrandall came out on the eleven-thirty. Hetty was at
the station with the motor, a sullen resentment in her heart, but
a welcoming smile on her lips. The sun shone brightly. The Sound
glared with the white of reflected skies.

"I thought of catching the eight o'clock," he cried enthusiastically,
as he dropped his bag beside the motor in order to reach over and
shake hands with her. "That would have gotten me here hours earlier.
The difficulty was that I didn't think of the eight o'clock until
I awoke at nine."

"And then you had the additional task of thinking about breakfast,"
said Hetty, but without a trace of sarcasm in her manner.

"I never think of breakfast," said he amiably. "I merely eat it.
Of course, it's a task to eat it sometimes, but--well, how are you?
How do you like it out here?"

He was beside her on the broad seat, his face beaming, his gay
little moustache pointing upward at the ends like oblique brown
exclamation points, so expansive was his smile.

"I adore it," she replied, her own smile growing in response to his.
It was impossible to resist the good nature of him. She could not
dislike him, even though she dreaded him deep down in her heart. Her
blood was hot and cold by turns when she was with him, as her mind
opened and shut to thoughts pleasant and unpleasant with something
of the regularity of a fish's gills in breathing.

"I knew you would. It's great. You won't care much for our place,
Miss Castleton. Sara's got the pick of the coast in that place of
hers. Trust old Sebastian Gooch to get the best of everything. If
my dad or my grand-dad had possessed a tenth of the brain that that
old chap had, we'd have our own tabernacle up there on the point,
instead of sulking at his back gate. That's really where we're
located, you know. His back gate opens smack in the face of our
front one. I think he did it with malice aforethought, too. His
back gate is two miles from the house. It wasn't really necessary
to go so far for a back gate as all that, was it? To make it worse,
he put a big sign over it for us to read: 'NO TRESPASSING. THIS
MEANS YOU.' Sara took it down after the old boy died."

"I suppose by that time the desire to trespass was gone," she said.
"One doesn't enjoy freedom of that sort."

"I've come to believe that the only free things we really covet
are passes to the theatre. We never get over that, I'm sure. I'd
rather have a pass to the theatre than a ten dollar bill any time.
I say, it was nice of you to come down to meet me. It was more than
I--er--expected." He almost said "hoped for."

"Sara was too busy about the house to come," she explained quickly.
"And I had a few errands to do in the village."

"Don't spoil it!"

"I am a horribly literal person," she said.

"Better that than literally horrible," he retorted, rather proud
of himself for it. "It's wonderful, the friendship between you two
girls--Sara's not much more than a girl, you see. You're so utterly
unlike in every way."

"It isn't strange to me," said she simply, but without looking at
him.

"Of course, I can understand it," he went on. "I've always liked
Sara. She's bully. Much too good for my brother, God rest his soul.
He never--"

"Oh, don't utter a thing like that, even in jest," she cried,
shocked by his glib remark.

He flushed. "You didn't know Challis," he said almost surlily.

She held her breath.

After a moment, the points of his little moustache went up again
in the habitual barometrical smile. Rather a priggish, supercilious
smile, she thought, taking a glance at his face.

"I say I can understand it, but mother and Vivian will never be
able to get it through those tough skulls of theirs. They really
don't like Sara. Snobs, both of 'em--of the worst kind, too. Why,
mother has always looked upon Sara as a--e---a sort of brigandess,
the kind that steals children and holds them for ransom. Of
course, old man Gooch was as common as rags--utterly impossible,
you know--but that shouldn't stand against Sara. By the way, her
father called her Sallie. Her mother was a very charming woman,
they say. We never knew her. For that matter, we never knew the
old man until he became prominent as a father-in-law."

The girl was silent. He went on.

"Mother likes you. She doesn't say it in so many words, but I
can see that she wonders how you can have anything in common with
Sara.  She prides herself on being able to distinguish blue blood
at a glance. Silly notion she's got, but--"

"Please don't go on, Mr. Wrandall," cried Hetty in distress.

"I'm not saying she isn't friendly to Sara nowadays," he explained.
"She's changed a good deal in the last few months. I think she's
broadening out a bit. Since that visit to Nice, she's been quite
different. As a matter of fact, she expects to see a good bit of
Sara and you this summer. It's like a spring thaw, by Jove, it is."

"When does she come to the country?" asked Hetty, bent on breaking
his train of confidence.

"In three or four weeks. But, as I was saying, the mater has taken
a great fancy to you. She--"

"It's very nice of her."

"She prides herself, as I said before, but she always makes sure
by asking questions."

"Questions?"

"Yes. Although she could see through you as if you were plate glass,
she made it a point to ask Sara all the questions she could think
of. Over in Nice, you know. Of course Sara told her everything,
and now she's quite sure she can't be mistaken in people. Really,
Miss Castleton, she's very amusing sometimes, mother is."

Hetty was looking straight ahead, her face set.

"What did Sara tell her about me?"

"Oh, all that was necessary to prove to mother that she was right.
As if it really made any difference, you know."

"Please explain."

"What is there to explain? She merely gave your pedigree, as we'd
say at the dog show, begging your pardon, ma'am. Pedigrees are a
sort of hobby with the mater. She collects 'em wherever she goes."

He gave his moustache a little twist.

"Then my references are satisfactory, so to speak," said she, with
a wry little smile.

"Perfectly," said he, with conviction; "if we are to put any
dependence in the intelligence office."

"Doesn't it stagger Mrs. Wrandall somewhat to reconcile my pedigree
to the position I occupy in Sara's household--that of companion,
so to say?" asked Hetty, a slight curl to her lip.

He looked rather blank. "I don't believe she looks at you in just
that light," said he uncomfortably.

"I fancy you'd better enlighten her."

"Let well enough alone," quoted he glibly.

"But I AM a companion," insisted Hetty, a little spot of red in
each cheek.

"In a sense, I suppose," said he affably. "Of course, Sara puts
you down as a friend."

"I think you'd better understand my real position, Mr. Wrandall,"
said she firmly.

"I do," said he. "You are Sara's friend. That's enough for me.
The fact that your father was or is a distinguished English army
officer, and some sort of a cousin to a lord, and that you have
the entre to fashionable London drawing-rooms, is quite enough for
mother. That qualifies you to be companion to anybody, she'd say.
And there's the end to it."

She was looking at him in amazement. Her lips were slightly parted
and her eyes were wide. For a moment she was puzzled. Then a swift
smile illumined her face. She understood.

"Of course, in London, it really isn't anything to boast about,
getting into drawing-rooms," she said, vastly amused.

"Well, it is over here," said he promptly.

"And it isn't always open sesame to be related to a peer."

"I suppose not."

"Nevertheless, I am glad that your mother and Miss Vivian take
me for what I am. Do you, by any chance, go in for pedigree, Mr.
Wrandall?"

The shaft of irony sped over his head.

"Only in dogs and horses," he replied promptly. "It means a lot
when it comes to buying a dog or a horse."

"How do you feel when you've been sold?"

"I take my medicine."

"As a good sportsman should."

"I dare say you think I'm a deuce of a prig for saying the things--"

"On the contrary, I appreciate your candour."

"Don't hesitate to say it. I'm used to being called a prig. My
brother Challis always considered me one. I think he meant snob.
But that was because our ideals weren't the same. By the way, you
ought to like Vivian."

"That depends."

"On Vivian, I suppose?"

"Not precisely. I should say it depends on your sister's attitude
toward Sara."

"Oh, she likes Sara well enough. Viv's not particularly narrow,
Miss Castleton."

Hetty bestowed a smile upon him.

"That's comforting, Mr. Wrandall," she said, and he was silent for
a moment, reflecting.

"Do you know," said he, as if a light had suddenly burst in upon
him, "you've got more poise than any girl I've ever seen?"

"It's my bringing up, sir," she said mockingly.

"Ancestral habit," he explained, with a polite bow.

"Pedigreeable manners, perhaps."

"I wish the mater could have heard you say that." admiringly.

"Don't you adore the country at this time of the year?"

"When I get to heaven I mean to have a place in the country the
year round," he said conclusively.

"And if you don't get to heaven?"

"I suppose I'll take a furnished flat somewhere."

Sara was waiting for them at the bottom of the terrace as they
drove up. He leaped out and kissed her hand.

"Much obliged," he murmured, with a slight twist of his head in
the direction of Hetty, who was giving orders to the chauffeur.

"You're quite welcome," said Sara, with a smile of understanding.
"She's lovely, isn't she?"

"Enchanting!" said he, almost too loudly.

Hetty walked up the long ascent ahead of them. She did not have
to look back to know that they were watching her with unfaltering
interest. She could feel their gaze.

"Absolutely adorable," he added, enlarging his estimate without
really being aware that he voiced it.

Sara shot a look at his rapt face, and turned her own away to hide
the queer little smile that flickered briefly and died away.

Hetty, pleading a sudden headache, declined to accompany them later
on in the day when they set forth in the car to "pick up" Brandon
Booth at the inn. They were to bring him over, bag and baggage, to
stay till Tuesday.

"He will be wild to paint her," declared Leslie when they were
out of sight around the bend in the road. He had waved his hat to
Hetty just before the trees shut off their view of her. She was
standing at the top of the steps beside one of the tall Italian
vases.

Sara did not respond.

"By the way, Sara, is she the niece or the grand-daughter of old
Lord Murgatroyd? I'm a bit mixed."

"Her father is Colonel Castleton, of the Indian Army, and he is the
eldest son of a second son, if you don't find that too difficult
to solve. The second son aforesaid mentioned, so to speak, was the
brother of Lord Murgatroyd. That would make Colonel Castleton his
Lordship's nephew, but utterly without prospects of coming into a
title, as there are several healthy British obstacles in the way.
I suppose one would call Hetty a grand-niece."

"Mother wasn't quite certain whether you said niece or grand-daughter,"
explained Leslie. "Her mother's dead, I take it.  Who was she?"

"Why are you so curious?"

"Isn't it quite natural?"

"Her mother was a Glynn. You have heard of the Glynns, of course?"
She trusted to his vanity and was rewarded. The question was a sort
of reproach.

"Certainly," he replied, without hesitation. The mere fact that she
spoke of them as "THE Glynns" was sufficient. It was proof enough
that they were people one ought to know, by name at least, if one
were to profess intelligence regarding the British aristocracy. As
a matter of fact, he had not heard of the Glynns, but that didn't
matter. "The Irish Glynns, you mean?" he ventured, taking a chance
at hitting the mark. He had a faint recollection of hearing her
say that Hetty was part Irish.

"You have only to look into her eyes to know she's Irish," she said
diplomatically.

"I've never seen such eyes," he exclaimed.

"She's a darling," said Sara and changed the subject, knowing full
well that he would come back to it before long. "Is it true that
Vivian and Mr. Booth are interested in each other?"

"Yes and no," he replied, with a profound sigh. "That is to say,
she's interested in him and he isn't interested in her--in the way
I take you to mean it. I suspect it's an easy matter for a girl to
fall in love with Brandy. He's a corking fine chap."

"Then it would be very nice for Vivian, eh?"

"Oh, quite so--quite so. His forbears came over with Noah, according
to mother. You know mother, Sara."

"Indeed I do," said she with conviction.

He laughed without restraint. "Mother can rattle off the best
families in the Bible without missing a name, beginning with the
Honourable Adam. Of course, she knows the Glynns and the Castletons
and the Mur

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