The Ancient Law

"You went straight to Paris, didn't you?"

"As soon as we landed, but Geoffrey made me come away in three weeks because he said I spent so much money." Her face clouded again at the recollection of her embarrassments. "Oh, we had awful scenes, but I hadn't even a wedding dress, you know, and French dressmakers are so frightfully expensive. One of them charged me five thousand dollars for a gown – but he told me that it was really cheap, because he'd sold one to another American the day before for twelve thousand. I don't know who her husband is," she added wistfully, "but I wish I were married to him."

The wildness of her extravagance depressed him even more than her excessive despair had done; and he wondered if the vagueness of her ideas of wealth was due to the utter lack in her of the imagination which foresees results? She had lived since her girlhood in a quiet Virginia town, her surroundings had been comparatively simple, and she had never been thrown, until her marriage, amid the corrupting influences of great wealth, yet, in spite of these things, she had squandered a fortune as carelessly as a child might have strewed pebbles upon the beach. Her regret at last had come not through realisation of her fault, but in the face of the immediate punishment which threatened her.

"So he got you out of Paris? Well, I'm glad of that," he remarked.

"He was perfectly brutal about it, I wish you could have heard him. Then we went down into Italy and did nothing for months but look at old pictures – at least I did, he wouldn't come – and float around in a gondola until I almost died from the monotony. It was only after I found a lace shop, where they had the most beautiful things, that he would take me away, and then he insisted upon going to some little place up in the Alps because he said he didn't suppose I could possibly pack the mountains into my trunks. Oh, those dreadful mountains! They were so glaring I could never go out of doors until the afternoon, and Geoffrey would go off climbing or shooting and leave me alone in a horrid little hotel where there was nobody but a one-eyed German army officer, and a woman missionary who was bracing herself for South Africa. She wore a knitted jersey all day and a collar which looked as if it would cut her head off if she ever forgot herself and bent her neck." Her laughter, the delicious, irresponsible laughter of a child, rippled out: "She asked me one day if our blacks wore draperies? The ones in South Africa didn't, and it made it very embarrassing sometimes, she said, to missionary to them. Oh, you can't imagine what I suffered from her, and Geoffrey was so horrid about it, and insisted that she was just the sort of companion that I needed. So one day when he happened to be in the writing-room where she was, I locked the door on the outside and threw the key down into the gorge. There wasn't any locksmith nearer than twenty miles, and when they sent for him he was away. Oh, it was simply too funny for words! Geoffrey on the inside was trying to break the heavy lock and the proprietor on the outside was protesting that he mustn't, and all the time we could hear the missionary begging everybody please to be patient. She said if it were required of her she was quite prepared to stay locked up all night, but Geoffrey wasn't, so he swung himself down by the branches of a tree which grew near the window."

All her old fascination had come back to her with her change of mood, and he forgot to listen to her words while he watched the merriment sparkle in her deep blue eyes. It was a part of his destiny that he should submit to her spell, as, he supposed, even Geoffrey submitted at times.

He was about to make some vague comment upon her story, when her face changed abruptly into an affected gravity, and turning his head, he saw that Lydia had come noiselessly into the room, and was advancing to meet her daughter with outstretched arms.

"Why, Alice, my child, what a beautiful surprise! When did you come?"

As Alice started forward to her embrace, Ordway noticed that there was an almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles of her body.

"Only a few minutes ago," she replied, with the characteristic disregard of time which seemed, in some way, to belong to her inability to consider figures, "and, oh, I am so glad to be back! You are just as lovely as ever."

"Well, you are lovelier," said Lydia, kissing her, and adding a moment afterward, as the result of her quick, woman's glance, "what a charming gown!"

Alice shrugged her shoulders, with a foreign gesture which she had picked up. "Oh, you must see some of my others," she replied, "I wish that my trunks would come, but I forgot they were all sent to the other house, and I haven't even a nightgown. Will you lend me a nightgown, mamma? I have some of the loveliest you ever saw which were embroidered for me by the nuns in a French convent."

"So, you'll spend the night?" said Lydia, "I'm so glad, dear, and I'll go up and see if your bed has sheets on it."

"Oh, it's not only for the night," returned Alice, defiantly, "I've come back for good. I've left Geoffrey, haven't I, papa?"

"I hope so, darling," answered Ordway, coming for the first time over to where they stood.

"Left Geoffrey?" repeated Lydia. "Do you mean you've separated?"

"I mean I'm never going back again – that I detest him – that I'd rather die – that I'll kill myself before I'll do it."

Lydia received her violence with the usual resigned sweetness that she presented to an impending crisis.

"But, my dear, my dear, a divorce is a horrible thing!" she wailed.

"Well, it isn't half so horrible as Geoffrey," retorted Alice.

Ordway, who had turned away again as Lydia spoke, came forward at the girl's angry words, and caught the hand that she had stretched out as if to push her mother from her.

"Let's be humbly grateful that we've got her back," he said, smiling, "while we prepare her bed."

CHAPTER IV

The Power of the Blood

WHEN he came out into the hall the next morning, Lydia met him, in her dressing-gown, on her way from Alice's room.

"How is she?" he asked eagerly. "Did she sleep?"

"No, she was very restless, so I stayed with her. She went home a quarter of an hour ago."

"Went home? Do you mean she's gone back to that brute?"

A servant's step sounded upon the staircase, and with her unfailing instinct for propriety, she drew back into his room and lowered her voice.

"She said that she was too uncomfortable without her clothes and her maid, but I think she had definitely made up her mind to return to him."

"But when did she change? You heard her say last night that she would rather kill herself."

"Oh, you know Alice," she responded a little wearily; and for the first time it occurred to him that the exact knowledge of Alice might belong, after all, not to himself, but to her.

"You think, then," he asked, "that she meant none of her violent protestations of last night?"

"I am sure that she meant them while she uttered them – not a minute afterward. She can't help being dramatic any more than she can help being beautiful."

"Are you positive that you said nothing to bring about her decision? Did you influence her in any way?"

"I did nothing more than tell her that she must make her choice once for all – that she must either go back to Geoffrey Heath and keep up some kind of appearances, or publicly separate herself from him. I let her see quite plainly that a state of continual quarrels was impossible and indecent."

Her point of view was so entirely sensible that he found himself hopelessly overpowered by its unassailable logic.

"So she has decided to stick to him for better or for worse, then?"

"For the present at all events. She realised fully, I think, how much she would be obliged to sacrifice by returning home?"

"Sacrifice? Good God, what?" he demanded.

"Oh, well, you see, Geoffrey lives in a fashion that is rather grand for Botetourt. He travels a great deal, and he makes her gorgeous presents when he is in a good humour. She seemed to feel that if we could only settle these bills for her, she would be able to bring about a satisfactory adjustment. I was surprised to find how quietly she took it all this morning. She had forgotten entirely, I believe, the scene she made downstairs last night."

This was his old Alice, he reflected in baffled silence, and apparently he would never attain to the critical judgment of her. Well, in any case, he was able to do justice to Lydia's admirable detachment.

"I suppose I may have a talk with Heath anyway?" he said at last.

"She particularly begs you not to, and I feel strongly that she is right."

"Does she expect me to sit quietly by and see it go on forever? Why, there were bruises on her arm that he had made with his fingers."

Lydia paled as she always did when one of the brutal facts of life was thrust on her notice.

"Oh, she doesn't think that will happen again. It appears that she had lost her temper and tried her best to infuriate him. He is still very much in love with her at times, and she hopes that by a little diplomacy she may be able to arrange matters between them."

"Diplomacy with that insufferable cad! Pshaw!"

Lydia sighed, not in exasperation, but with the martyr's forbearance.

"It is really a crisis in Alice's life," she said, "and we must treat it with seriousness."