So she had already told him! The little pang of unworthy jealousy came back, but I banished it.
"Now, there must be no more time lost," he went on. "You have had no man to look after things for you, but remember now, your old brother, Jack, is on the job. First, I must know everything that occurred on that last day. Did you notice anything extraordinary in his demeanor on that last morning you saw him?"
This was the old Jack, going directly to the root of the matter, wasting no time on his own affairs or feelings, when he saw a duty before him. I felt the old sway of his personality upon me, and answered his questions as meekly as a child might have done.
"He was just the same as he had been every morning since my accident,"I returned.
"H-m." Jack thought a long minute, then began again.
"Tell me everything that happened that day, every visitor you had; don't omit the most trifling thing," he commanded.
He listened attentively as I recalled Harry Underwood's visit, and Robert Gordon's. At my revelation that Robert Gordon had said he was my father, his calm, judicial manner broke into excitement.
"Your father!" he exclaimed, and then, after a pause; "I always knew he would come back some day. But go on. What happened when he told you he was your father?"
I went on with the story of my struggle with my own rancor against my father, of my conviction that I had heard my mother's voice urging my reconciliation with him, of my father's first embrace and kisses, even of the queer smothered sound like a groan and the slamming of a door which I had heard. Then I told him of my father's gift of money to me, which I had not yet touched, but I noticed that toward the last of my narrative Jack seemed preoccupied.
"Did your husband come home to Marvin at all that day?" he asked.
"No, he never came back from the city after he had once gone in, until evening."
"But are you sure that this day he did not return to Marvin?" he persisted. "How do you know?"
"Because no one saw him," I returned, "and he could hardly have come back without someone in the house seeing him."
He said no more, as Lillian and Katherine came up just then, and the conversation became general.
To my great surprise, I did not see him again after that first visit. Katherine explained to me that he had been called out of town on urgent business, but the explanation seemed to me to savor of the mysterious excitement that seemed to possess everybody around me.
Finally one morning, Lillian came to me, her face shining.
"I want you to prepare to be very brave, Madge," she said. "There is some one coming whom I fear it will tax all your strength to meet."
"Dicky!" I faltered, beginning to tremble.
"No, child, not yet," she said, her voice filled with pity, "but someone who has done you a great wrong, Grace Draper."
"Grace Draper coming to see me!"
My echo of Lillian's words was but a trembling stammer. The prospect of facing the girl the thread of whose sinister personality had so marred the fabric of my marital happiness terrified me. Her message to me, posted in San Francisco, where Dicky was, flaunted its insolent triumph again before my eyes:
"She laughs best who laughs last."
That she had intended me to believe she was with Dicky, I knew, whether her boast were true or not. But how was it that she was coming to see me? Lillian put a reassuring hand upon my shoulder as she saw my face.
"Pull yourself together, Madge," she admonished me sharply. "Let me make this clear to you. Grace Draper is not in San Francisco now. Whether she has been, or what she knows about Dicky she has refused so far to say. She has finally consented to see you, however."
"But, how?" I murmured, bewildered.
"Do you remember the girl of whom Katherine spoke when she first came, the girl who moaned at night in the room next hers?"
"Oh, yes! And she was—?"
"Grace Draper. I do not know what made me think of the Draper when Katherine spoke of the girl, but I did, although I said nothing about it at the time. A little later, however, when the girl became really ill and Katherine was caring for her as a mother or a sister would have done, I told our little friend of my suspicion. Of course, Katherine watched her mysterious patient very carefully after that, and when she became ill enough to require a physician's services, Katharine managed it so that Dr. Pettit was called, and he recognized the girl at once.
"Ever since then, Katherine has been working on the substitute for honor and conscience which the Draper carries around with her—but she was hard as nails for a long time. She is terribly grateful to Katherine, however, as fond of her as she can be of anyone, and she has finally consented to come here. Don't anger her if you can help it."
When, a little later, Grace Draper and I faced each other, it was pity instead of anger that stirred my heart. The girl was inexpressibly wan, her beauty only a worn shadow of its former glory. But there was the old flash of defiant hatred in her eyes as she looked at me.
"Please don't flatter yourself that I have come here for your sake," she said, with her old smooth insolence. "But this girl here"—she indicated Katherine—"took care of me before she knew who I was. She just about saved my life and reason, too, when there was nobody else to care a whit whether I lived or died. Even my sister's gone back on me. So when I saw how much it meant to her to find out the truth about your precious husband, I promised her I'd come and tell you the little I knew."
She drew a long breath, and went on.
"In the first place, I didn't go to San Francisco with Dicky Graham, although I'm glad if my little trick made you think so for awhile. I didn't go anywhere with him except into a café for a few minutes, the day he left New York. It was just after he got back from Marvin, and he was pouring drinks into himself so fast that he was pretty hazy about what had happened, but I made a pretty shrewd guess as to his trouble."
She turned to me, and I saw with amazement that contempt for me was written on her face.
"You!" she snarled, "with your innocent face, and your high and mighty airs, you must have been up to something pretty disgraceful, to have your husband feel the way he did that day he started for San Francisco! He had to go out to Marvin unexpectedly that morning, almost as soon as he had arrived in the city. What or who he found there, you know best."
"Stop!" said Lillian authoritatively, and for a long minute the two women faced each other, Grace Draper defiant, Lillian, with all the compelling, almost hypnotic power that is hers when she chooses to exercise it.
The accusation which the girl had hurled at me stunned me as effectually as an actual missile from her hand would have done. What did she mean? And then, before my dazed brain could work itself back through the mazes of memory, there came the whir of a taxi in the street, an imperative ring of the bell, a tramp of masculine footsteps in the hall, and then—my husband's arms were around me, his lips murmuring disjointed, incoherent sentences against my cheek.
"Madge! Madge! little sweetheart!—no right to ask forgiveness—deserve to lose you forever for my doubt of you—been through a thousand hells since I left—"
Over Dicky's shoulder I saw Jack's dear face smiling tenderly, triumphantly, at me, realized that he must have started after Dicky as soon as he had heard my story of my husband's inexplicable departure—and the light for which I had been groping suddenly illuminated Grace Draper's words.
"So you saw my father embrace me that day!" I exclaimed, and at the words the face of the girl who had caused me so much suffering grew whiter, if possible, and she sank into a chair, as if unable to stand.
"Yes." A wave of shamed color swept my husband's face, his words were low and hurried. "But you must believe this one thing,—I had made up my mind to come back and beg your forgiveness, indeed, I was just ready to start for New York, when your cousin found me and brought me the true explanation of things.
"I—I—couldn't stand it any longer without you, Madge. I must have been mad to go away like that. You won't shut me out altogether, will you, sweetheart?"
I had thought that if Dicky ever came back me I should make him suffer a little of what he had compelled me to endure. But, as I looked from the white, drawn face of the girl, who I was sure still counted Dicky's love as a stake for which no wager was too high, to the anxious faces of the dear friends who had helped to bring him back to me, I could do nothing but yield myself rapturously to the clasp of my husband's arms.
"I couldn't have stood it much longer without you, Dicky," I whispered, and then, forgetting everything else in the world but our happiness, my husband's lips met mine in a long kiss of reconciliation.
A half choked little cry startled me, and I saw Grace Draper get to her feet unsteadily and start for the door, with her hands outstretched gropingly before her, almost as if she were blind. Katherine Sonnot hurried to her, and then Jack spoke to me for the first time since he had brought Dicky into the room.
"Good-by, Margaret, until I see you again," he said hurriedly."Good-by, Dicky, I must go to Katherine."
"Good-by, old chap," Dicky returned heartily, and in his tone I read the blessed knowledge that my cherished dream had come true, that my husband and my brother-cousin were friends at last. And from the look upon Jack's face as his eyes met Katharine's, I knew that he, too, had found happiness.
I saw the trio go out of the room, the girl who had wronged me, and the friends who had helped me. Then my eyes turned to the truest, most loyal friend of all, Lillian, who stood near us, frankly weeping with joy. I put out my hand to her, and drew her also into Dicky's embrace. How long a cry it had been since the days when I was wildly jealous of her old friendship with Dicky!
"Will you come away with me for a new honeymoon, sweetheart?" Dicky asked, tenderly, after awhile, when Lillian had softly slipped away and left us alone together.
Into my brain there flashed a sudden picture of the homely living room in the Brennan house at Marvin, with the leaping fire, which I knew Jim would have for us whenever we came, with Katie's impetuous welcome. I turned to Dicky with a passionate little plea.
"Oh! Dicky," I said earnestly, "take me home."