XIIIt took half-an-hour for the decrepit cab horse to drag the vehicle to the door of the splendid home which was now Alicia March's alone. As she entered she met Watson."Is my husband here?" she asked.Watson raised his eyebrows in cool contempt."He is on his way to his ranch in the West, never to return. May I see you now for a few minutes to transact some necessary business?"Alicia without a word led the way to her own boudoir, passing the door of her husband's study. The desk was clear and already men were at work packing the books which were all that Roger March took from the noble fittings of what had once been his home. It was so like removing the paraphernalia of a dead man that Alicia shuddered as she passed the door. Seated at a table in her own rooms, Watson passed over to her certain deeds, papers, and a bank-book showing a large sum of money deposited to her credit at the bank.For all of these he required Alicia's signed receipt, which she mechanically gave, understanding little of the details of business. When it was over, Watson rose and took his hat."But," said Alicia, dazed and distraught by all that had passed so quickly, and helpless in the management of affairs, "what shall I do with these things? Will you take charge of them? I really don't--don't understand.""Excuse me," answered Watson coldly, "it is impossible for me to act further in your affairs. If you wish any more information, and will notify me who is your man of business, I will consult with him at any time." And without saying good-morning, and putting his hat on in her presence, Watson left the room.Alicia sat stunned, but dimly conscious of the indignity and affront put upon her. She was of a caste accustomed to all the niceties of respect, and she had managed to retain them until now. She began to ask herself, if she received such treatment from Watson, what might she expect from the whole world? And then there was an awful sense of loss in the mere absence of her husband. Often during the four years of her last marriage it had seemed to her as if her husband was the person who put everything out of joint. She had her establishment, her money, her liberty, and could do as she pleased, which was freely granted her, and life would have been delightful, but close to her always was this man before whom she must ever act the part of a perfectly upright woman. It was that which had produced the curious sense of dislocation and bewilderment which had always haunted her. Now that he was gone, however, the dislocation and bewilderment seemed greater than ever. She came of good fighting stock, and presently she found a little of her courage, and began to think what was best to do in order to save herself. The first thing, of course, was to have her father come to her. She wrote out a long and urgent cablegram, certain to bring General Talbott at once, and then ringing for a servant, sent it off. There would be time enough before General Talbott's arrival to consider what she should tell and what should remain unknown. Then the thought that Sir Percy and Lady Carlyon must surmise the truth came to her, and it was poignant enough to make itself felt even in those first hours of shock. She was no more able to rid herself of the involuntary hold which Sir Percy Carlyon had upon her than she had been a dozen years before. With the Carlyons, however, she had a strong card to play in General Talbott, who would soon be at hand. She sent for the servants and calmly informed them that her husband, whom she called Mr. March for the first time, would be absent indefinitely, and that the establishment would be kept up, and they could retain their positions if their conduct remained good.In the afternoon Colegrove's card was brought up to her. She went down into one of the vast, silent drawing-rooms to see him. Colegrove was not pleased at this, and would rather have seen her in her boudoir, but nevertheless met her with a smile and debonair manner. Alicia looked pale, but her manner was quite composed."I hope you will pardon me for saying that I am afraid your husband has acted hastily," said Colegrove, when they were seated, "but of course the career of a man like that can't be closed so suddenly. All this will blow over in time, and five years from to-day we may see him in the Senate again. As far as I am concerned, I have lost a good friend, and I shall now be hounded into retirement, if not into prison."He smiled as he spoke, showing his white even teeth, and Alicia could not but admire his cool courage in the face of what must have been to him a catastrophe scarcely less than her own. They were sitting in the embrasure of a window, and their low voices were lost in the expanse of the great room. Nevertheless Colegrove did not consider it an ideal place to say what he had come to say. He said it, however, glancing through the wide-open doors to see that no person was in hearing."March has accused himself of what no one believes, but has left you to bear the real burden. That is really what his alleged confession amounts to. I don't think that you owe him anything. If he stays away, as you tell me he means to, you may claim your freedom at any time, and then perhaps you will consider me, who would never leave you as March has done. For my own part, I, of course, can get a divorce any day I choose."The same strange feeling of indignation came over Alicia which she felt when Colegrove had once before made implication against Roger March. Still she did not repulse him, who was the only human being that had voluntarily come to her that day, and she felt intuitively that he was the only one who would continue to come."You must not speak of such things," she said coldly, and rising.Colegrove rose too. He had implanted the notion in her mind that March, after all, had sacrificed her, and that she was nothing to him. A new expression came into Alicia's speaking eyes. She looked fixedly at Colegrove and then bent her head in reflection."I go now," said Colegrove, "to fight my battle. I don't know how, or when, or where it will end, but if they drag me down I will, like Samson, drag down all I can with me, and the crash will be heard from one end of this continent to the other. Here is an address that will always find me."He lifted her passive hand to his lips, put a card within it, and went away without another word.Alicia spent the intervening hours between then and a solitary dinner walking up and down the great drawing-rooms. She did not give Colegrove a thought; her mind, agonised and tormented, was working upon the problem whether or not March, in the intensity of his anger, had deliberately sacrificed her.The sense of fitness and good taste, which had never left Alicia Vernon, remained with Alicia March. She did not run away from Washington, but, having determined to take up the attitude of an injured woman, remained in her house, but in strict seclusion. Every day she took the air in a closed carriage, or, heavily veiled, walked for hours. She continually met her acquaintances, who spoke to her coolly and passed on, and Alicia did the same. A few persons, chiefly silly women and foolish young men, left cards for her, but Mrs. March, knowing that such backing was a detriment instead of a help, was excused at the door. She had received an immediate response from her father, who had taken the first steamer for America. Within a fortnight from the day Roger March left his home General Talbott arrived. He knew of March's resignation from the Senate, and Alicia, in the first hour of her father's arrival, put in his hand the newspaper which contained the charges andThe Congressional Record, with March's speech, and left him to draw his own conclusion. General Talbott read them through carefully, and then, taking Alicia's hand, said to her with tears in his brave old eyes:"My child, you have been singled out for ill-treatment, and to bear the sins of others. March's conduct was inherently wrong, but it showed a cruel disregard of you not to make some show of fight for his name. Your father, however, will remain your steadfast friend."The presence of General Talbott sensibly improved Alicia March's position in Washington. His old friends, of whom he had many, called to see him, and perforce left cards for Mrs. March. Among them was the card of Sir Percy Carlyon, but no card was left for Alicia, nor did Lady Carlyon's card accompany her husband's. Alicia observed this, but she did not choose to notice it openly at present. She meant that considerable time should pass before she began an active struggle to regain her lost position.Early in May the great house was shut up and Alicia March and her father sailed for England. It was two years and a half before she reappeared in Washington. During that interval no one in Washington heard of March, except Watson, who received occasional communications from him on business. He seemed to have dropped out of the world; the depths of the Sierras is a very good hiding-place for a broken-hearted man.Those two years and a half seemed to be unclouded for the Carlyons. Sir Percy found his mission exactly to his liking, and his prestige was steadily increased by his management of affairs. It even met with the approval of Lord Baudesert, who found himself unable to keep away from his beloved Washington. Mrs. Chantrey, whose hopes of being an Ambassadress had been dashed by Lord Baudesert's retirement, still cherished dreams of being Lady Baudesert, and was warmly encouraged in her aspirations by that wicked old gentleman during his whole visit to Washington. Eleanor Chantrey had remained unmarried. Her beauty and her fortune would have enabled her to make a choice of many brilliant marriages, but deep in her heart rankled something like disappointment. She had not been in love with Sir Percy Carlyon, but she would have married him if he had asked her, an attitude of mind commoner among women towards men than is generally supposed. Eleanor was certainly fitted to be an Ambassadress, but Lady Carlyon had fitted herself with consummate address for that lofty position. Lord Baudesert was openly delighted at the position which Lady Carlyon had made for herself. Her dignity, her sweetness and good sense had given her also a prestige which made her backing of the greatest value. Every woman in Washington society whose social and personal record was not like the driven snow was eager for the support of Lady Carlyon. With natural good judgment and acquired prudence Lady Lucy, as Lord Baudesert, like Sir Percy, called her, managed to escape every pitfall. She could neither be used, nor worked, wheedled, nor bullied, but pursued a course inspired alike by good taste and good feeling. Her two boys increased day by day in beauty and intelligence, and Sir Percy would have reckoned himself among the happiest as well as the most successful of men but for the memory of Alicia March. He was haunted by the thought, not without reason, that he was responsible for the tragedy which had befallen Roger March. He could readily imagine the motive which inspired March, and the thought of him dragged down by his wife's dishonour, seeking oblivion in the farthest corner of the continent, was a keen and ever-present regret to Sir Percy Carlyon. He had heard occasionally from General Talbott, who was abroad with his daughter. The great March house remained closed but tenantless, and Sir Percy surmised that Alicia March would in time return to the scene of her greatest triumphs and her deepest humiliation.The echoes of the great railway scandal lasted during all of these two years and a half. Colegrove was not the man to go down without a terrific struggle. March's acknowledgment of the charges and his resignation would have been too strong for any except the strongest of men to withstand, but Colegrove, finding himself with his back to the wall, fought with a desperation worthy of a better cause. He had the money, the courage and the adroitness to drag everything into the courts, where the law's delay was a great help to him. So many powerful interests were involved that they made a bulwark around him. At the end of the two years and a half he was actually in much better case than he had been when he had first been pinned to the wall by his enemies, and his supply of ammunition had been increased. He had succeeded, by pouring out money like water, in enmeshing everybody and everything in a legal tangle from which no one could see a way out. His natural genius for making money was such that he could always contrive to make vast sums, and the wonder was, as with a clever pickpocket, why he did not satisfy himself with the brilliant success he could have made legitimately. Every two or three months during that time he communicated with Alicia March. He had an apparent reason for doing so, as he represented that the stocks held for her in his name were always earning dividends, and every letter contained a cheque. One of these letters informed her that his wife had got a divorce from him. The poor lady had in truth been goaded into it. Alicia March made no reference to this in the brief replies she sent to his letters.XIIIOne afternoon in December, nearly three years after Mrs. March had left Washington, Lady Carlyon was driving through the fashionable street in which the March house was situated. Lord Baudesert, who was on his annual visit to Washington, was in the carriage with her."Look, my Lady Lucy!" he said; "Mrs. March has come back, like another Joan of Arc, to defy her enemies. By Jupiter! that woman is as brave as Hector and Lord Nelson rolled in one. I have heard some pretty stories about her."Some of these stories related to Lady Carlyon's husband, but Lord Baudesert gave no hint of this. Lady Carlyon glanced out of the carriage window and saw that the splendid March house was occupied. A handsome carriage, with a pink and white footman and coachman to match exactly, was standing before the door, and at that moment Alicia March, accompanied by General Talbott, came out and entered the carriage. Lady Carlyon, whose eyes were quick, got a brief but complete view of her."She seems quite unchanged," said Lady Carlyon to Lord Baudesert, "and doesn't look a day older than when she left Washington.""How keen you women are about this thing of looks," replied Lord Baudesert, his black eyes twinkling under his beetling brows."It is you who make us value our youth and looks so much," said Lady Carlyon in response, smiling and composed, though all the while her heart was beating with pain--pain for herself and for her husband."Mrs. March, I see, has brought Talbott with her, and Talbott's backing, I take it, is worth that of ten ordinary men with pistols in their pockets," was Lord Baudesert's next remark."Sir Percy can never forget his obligations to General Talbott," replied Lady Carlyon."And Alicia March won't let him forget them if he would." Then, catching sight of Mrs. Chantrey taking her constitutional, Lord Baudesert halted the carriage, scrambled out, and was soon promenading up and down Connecticut Avenue with that eternally hopeful lady, to her undisguised rapture. She lamented to Lord Baudesert Eleanor's hardness of heart toward the other sex, and Lord Baudesert was lauding the unexpected good sense of the three Vereker girls, each one of whom had married a curate, and could not expect to do any better.Lady Carlyon, when she reached home, and was alone with her husband, told him of the new arrivals."You must prepare to meet them," she said resolutely, "and even to have them to dinner."Sir Percy sighed heavily."What have I not brought upon you, my poor child?" he said."Nothing I cannot bear," responded Lady Carlyon.Three days afterwards the expected happened--Alicia March and General Talbott called at the British Embassy. They came at an hour when they were sure to find the Carlyons at home. As Lady Carlyon had said, Mrs. March gave no outward sign of the stress and storm through which she must have passed. She and Lady Carlyon met and talked as do two women of the world who mutually hate and distrust each other, but who expect to meet at dinner. Mrs. March spoke pleasantly of her travels with her father. They had spent two winters in Egypt, and their summers cruising on the Dalmatian coast, but, after all, she said, Washington was the most agreeable place of all the winter resorts she had ever known, and she had determined to pass her winters there hereafter. She did not tell Lady Carlyon of the strange desire she felt to get back to the same orbit in which Sir Percy moved, nor of the equally strange inability she had to forget her husband. She had every reason to remain abroad, where the catastrophe of her Washington life was little known, and where the prestige of her father's name was greater and more general, but that strange instinct which makes a murderer return to the scene of his crime will always make a woman like Alicia March return to the scene of her adventures.Lady Carlyon said to the General what she could not very well avoid saying, that she hoped he would soon come to dine with them, but named no date. It required all Sir Percy's self-control to prevent General Talbott from seeing how unwelcome his daughter was at the British Embassy. Nevertheless, this was accomplished, and after a longish visit General Talbott went away feeling that in Sir Percy and Lady Carlyon his poor Alicia had two staunch friends.There was, however, no escape for the Carlyons for the dinner invitation to Alicia March with General Talbott, and a few days afterwards it was despatched and promptly accepted. Mrs. March's presence at the British Embassy did much to re-establish her, for there were many persons, especially in public life, who surmised the truth, and that Roger March was simply lying like a gentleman when he took the blame upon himself. The smart set, however, does not always keep labels on public men and things, and besides its members have short memories. Roger March's name was never mentioned by his wife or in her presence; Alicia March took up the attitude of an injured woman who bears in silence the defection of her husband; therefore, by the exercise of tact, courage and industry, knowing where to leave cards and where not, she found herself steadily regaining her former position in Washington society. When it was getting on best, however, it was suddenly retarded by the appearance of Colegrove, and his frequent visits to Mrs. March. Alicia knew the world too well not to understand the risk of any association with Colegrove. But Colegrove, himself, had impressed upon her at his first visit that she must assume the attitude of a perfectly innocent woman and not decline his visits. He had in him such power of coercing her that Alicia accepted his views, as most others did when brought into contact with him.Alicia never saw him alone--she always had her father to act as sheepdog. When General Talbott was not at home Colegrove was always informed that Mrs. March asked to be excused. Colegrove took his rebuffs coolly, and continued to call during the visiting hours when he was likely to be seen at Mrs. March's door. He was in the act of pulling the bell on the day when Lady Carlyon called to leave cards on Mrs. March. Twice afterwards in the same week Lady Carlyon saw Colegrove evidently coming from Mrs. March's house, and she spoke of it to Sir Percy. The very next day came a dinner invitation from Alicia March asking Lady Carlyon to name an evening when she and Sir Percy could dine with Mrs. March and General Talbott. Sir Percy ground his teeth when Lady Carlyon was writing a conventional note of acceptance, naming a date some weeks ahead.The week before the dinner a note came from Lady Carlyon saying that Sir Percy and herself were asked to the White House to meet a distinguished Englishman visiting the United States, and must, therefore, ask to be excused from Mrs. March's dinner. Alicia replied with an equally conventional note. A fortnight later she called at the Embassy, and with her sweetest voice and manner asked Lady Carlyon to name another date for dining with her. Again Lady Carlyon named a date. The morning of the dinner Sir Percy went into his wife's boudoir, and after standing silent for a while with an angry and sombre face, said to her:"I can't have you dining with Alicia March. I always hated it, and I find that man Colegrove is at her house a great deal. You must have a headache, cold or something by which you can excuse yourself. I will go; I am not better than Alicia March, but you are ten thousand times better than she."Usually Lady Carlyon could reason with her husband, but on this occasion he was quite intractable. Lady Carlyon therefore wrote a note of excuse and secluded herself for the day, alleging illness. Sir Percy went to the dinner, and found an odd conglomeration of guests, very much like that collected by the rich man in the Bible for his son's wedding. Alicia was perfectly conscious of the collection she had made, but bore herself with her usual dignity and outward composure. Even General Talbott, who had felt a secret uneasiness concerning Alicia's reception in Washington, was conscious that her dinner guests were of a somewhat mixed variety, and hinted as much to her the next day. He even mentioned that Colegrove's visits to the house might be misunderstood. Alicia was of the same opinion. Colegrove still possessed for her the interest a woman feels for a man who is deeply interested in her, and, besides, Colegrove was the only man she had ever known who understood her inability to make any income she might have meet her expenses. He never scolded her, but seemed to think her continual want of money an amiable weakness. Nevertheless Alicia, growing frightened at the changing attitude of society toward her, wrote a note to Colegrove imploring him not to come again to see her. In reply, Colegrove called to ask for an explanation. He caught Alicia just as she was entering the house. Without waiting for an invitation, he walked into the great drawing-room, where their last private interview had occurred, nearly three years before."Of course," said Alicia, when they were out of hearing, though not out of sight, "you are trying to compromise me.""All is fair in love," replied Colegrove calmly; "you had better let me come openly, and ask me to dinner."Alicia would make no promise, but when she was alone in her boudoir she reflected upon the strangeness of the American character. Two Americans loved her; one had made a stupendous sacrifice for her, and the other was pursuing her with an ingenuity of persistence, a handiness of resource, which was new and puzzling to her English mind. And then as women do who know how to think, she began to consider with a kind of sad wonder why she could not emancipate herself from the influence of Colegrove, and from that of Sir Percy Carlyon, and, what was strangest of all, from the memory of Roger March, and did not realise that men only have the art of forgetting."No woman, alas! forgets," she thought to herself, and, rising, went to her husband's rooms, and, closing the door after her, she walked about them aimlessly. Roger March had done her a fearful injury; such quixotism as his could benefit no one. She felt a deep resentment against him, but that was far from forgetting him. In the four years and a half of her life with Roger March there had been a continual sense of discomfort; his personality, agreeable though it was, seemed perpetually at war with her secret self. She had taken him as the necessary adjunct of his fortune, and she should have been glad to get rid of him, if only she could forget him. But she found herself continually thinking about him, wondering what kind of existence he led, and if he ever felt any regret as to what he had done. She had thought herself the coolest-headed and best-balanced of women, but she seemed, as she grew older, to be losing rather than gaining her self-possession.Things had come to such a pass by the end of the season that Alicia was slipping back socially. One thing which she felt necessary for her to do, if she was to remain in Washington, was to have Lady Carlyon seen at her house. She could not for ever go on giving invitations which were cleverly evaded. The only thing was to seek Lady Carlyon and bring the matter to an issue. To do this it would be necessary to take Lady Carlyon unawares, for she would certainly excuse herself if Mrs. March called at the Embassy at an unusual time, and there would be no chance for her if she went at the customary visiting hour. Alicia therefore watched for her opportunity and determined to seize it anywhere and at any time. It came most unexpectedly.One night she and General Talbott were at the theatre, and when the first act of the play was half over Sir Percy and Lady Carlyon appeared in an upper box alone. Sir Percy, after seating his wife comfortably, said a few words and went out, carrying his hat and great-coat. Lady Carlyon, sitting far back in the box, watched the play and was quite unobserved by any one in the audience except Alicia March. When General Talbott went out of the theatre after the curtain came down on the first act, Alicia, seeing the way clear before her, climbed the narrow stairs to the box and walked in on Lady Carlyon. Never did Lady Carlyon have a more unwelcome guest, or one with whom she less desired a private conversation. She greeted Alicia politely, however, and said:"Sir Percy will return in a little while. He had an appointment for half-an-hour this evening, and brought me to the play to await him.""I am very glad," replied Alicia in her sweetest voice, "that he is absent, because I wish to ask you a question of the most private nature."Then she took a chair, and the two women, each perfect mistress of herself, began the duello. "It is," continued Alicia softly, "whether you have any real objection to entering my house?"Lady Carlyon remained silent, and after a minute Alicia March spoke again:"I see you have; I may as well speak frankly. As an Englishwoman, and strangely situated as I am, I can't expect any recognition if the British Ambassador, who is supposed to be one of my oldest acquaintances, and certainly my father's greatest friend, refuses to allow his wife, or his wife refuses, to come to my house. It is not much to ask.""Sir Percy feels that it is a great deal to ask," replied Lady Carlyon, a faint colour appearing in her usually pale cheeks.Their voices were so low that not a person, even those in the next box, could make out what they were saying. All over the theatre was the buzz of conversation, and the brilliant lights penetrated even the dim interior of the upper box."Sir Percy, then," said Alicia after a pause, "has told you all?"Lady Carlyon inclined her head silently, her eyes lighting up with anger as she looked resolutely in Alicia March's calm face."Tell him from me, please," Alicia continued after a pause, while the two women steadily eyed each other, "that he may take his choice, either of sending you to my house or having that early story between us made known to certain persons in power. You know these Americans are a prudish people, and, ridiculous as it may seem, the fact of the relations between your husband and myself in our youth being made known, and the fact that he has been at my house and I have been to yours, would cause an intimation to him that he had better leave Washington. You may tell Sir Percy, also, that your absence from my house is perplexing and troubling to my father, and for that reason, if for no other, I mean that you shall come to my house, or Sir Percy's diplomatic career in Washington will be ended.""Sir Percy is not a man to yield to threats," replied Sir Percy's wife. By this time her cheeks were crimson, but her voice was still composed."These are not threats, but promises. I grant you I could not do this except in Washington. I should be laughed at anywhere in Europe if I attempted to make known certain facts about Sir Percy's early life, and I could not do him the slightest harm, but you see these people are very different. Ambassadors have been quietly notified, before this, that their presence was not acceptable. The public are not taken into the confidence of the people in power, nevertheless Ambassadors are ruined. There will not be a public scandal; if there were my father would know it, and I believe that he would shoot himself. All that I promise will be done very quietly, but it will be done, if you and Sir Percy continue obstinate. I shall be at home all day to-morrow and shall expect Sir Percy to call to see me. Good-evening."She rose and left the box, and as she passed through the narrow lobby outside she came face to face with Sir Percy Carlyon."I have just had an interview with Lady Carlyon," said Alicia March composedly, "and I shall expect to see you at my house some time to-morrow."Sir Percy bowed in silence without showing the least surprise, and stepped into the box. Lady Carlyon had taken a chair well at the front of the box, and with her slender, shapely arm resting upon the ledge, was in full view of the house. Her face was quite calm, but a deep flush upon her usually pale cheeks showed Sir Percy that the interview between her and Alicia March had been of an unusual nature. Obeying an indication from his wife, Sir Percy sat also in full view of the audience and of Alicia March, once more among the audience. She had reached her seat before General Talbott's return, and he had no idea that she had left it during his absence."Look, my love!" he said, "there are the Carlyons. Lady Carlyon is looking remarkably handsome and animated to-night. I think I will go and speak with them during the next interval."Alicia smiled, but said nothing. It would be an added torment to the Carlyons to have General Talbott with them.When the curtain came down for the second time General Talbott, as good as his word, went to the Carlyons' box. Alicia, from below, saw him cordially received, and Lady Carlyon, all smiles and composure, talking with him. He left the box just before the curtain went up, and when the Carlyons were alone Sir Percy said to his wife:"Would you like to leave the theatre now?""By no means," answered Lady Carlyon promptly; "we will remain through the play, and you must wait until then to know what has happened.""You are a brave creature, my Lady Lucy," responded her husband.The Carlyons were among the last people to leave the theatre, and when they were in their carriage Lady Carlyon told her husband what had happened. He heard it in silence and made no comment. Later, when they had reached home and were alone, Lady Carlyon would have spoken of it again, but Sir Percy stopped her."Not any more to-night," he said; "to-morrow will be time enough."XIVNext morning, although it was the beginning of spring, the snow was falling, and a biting northeast wind made the day look like one in December. Lady Carlyon was sitting in her morning-room with her two beautiful children at her knees when Sir Percy entered about twelve o'clock. Nothing is so beautiful and interesting as a young mother with her children, and Sir Percy, standing on the hearth-rug, paid his wife the tribute of admiration. She played with the children and danced about the room with them as if she were a child herself. Sir Percy was not surprised at her cheerfulness; he had ever found in her that admirable quality of courage and gaiety of heart in the presence of danger which is half the battle. It is commonly observed that this presence of danger produces in brave men a quickening of the intellect as well as an exhilaration of spirits, and it is equally true of brave women. Lady Carlyon was singularly fearless; her pride was up in arms. Alicia March had made claim to some part and lot in Sir Percy Carlyon's life, a claim which Lady Carlyon treated with fine scorn, and Alicia March had made threats and had assumed the power of disposing of Sir Percy Carlyon's career. This aroused in Lady Carlyon the spirit of defiance. These things brought smiles to her face, a new light to her eyes, and a haughtier carriage to her delicate head. Sir Percy knew well these signs. Presently, however, the children were sent away and the husband and wife were alone."I am going now to see Mrs. March," said Sir Percy coolly; "I think I may as well give up the fight. Alicia March is not the woman to make idle threats, and she can do precisely what she says she can. Besides, General Talbott has to be considered. It will be difficult to keep such an affair from him, and he is one of these mediæval men, something like March himself, of whom no one can predict anything when a question of his own or his daughter's honour is involved. I can quietly resign and go away. We shall have enough to live upon modestly, and in some quiet corner of England we can forget Alicia March, and live for each other and our children. It is a downfall for you, my Lady Lucy, and I am the one who has brought it upon you."Lady Carlyon went up to him, laying her hand on his arm, and said with sparkling eyes:"Give up the fight, do you mean, and let Mrs. March drive you from your position?""There is nothing else to be done," replied Sir Percy quietly. "Think for a moment; I can't make a fight without making it public. If I were alone I shouldn't care for the publicity, but you--not for twenty ambassadorships would I bring you into anything like this."Lady Carlyon dropped her head upon his shoulder and burst into tears, which wrung his heart, but did not change his resolution. Half-an-hour afterwards he was ushered into Mrs. March's boudoir, where Alicia waited for him. Sir Percy refused the chair which she offered him and remained standing, hat in hand. Alicia March felt a sense of triumph which glowed in her eyes; Sir Percy had wearied of her and had scorned her, but in the end, when he had reached the height of his ambition, she had brought him to heel roundly after nearly nineteen years."Lady Carlyon gave me your message," he said, when the first cool greetings were exchanged. "You are quite able to do all that you have threatened. If I were alone I should make a fight, but for Lady Carlyon's sake I am willing to surrender. I shall require a few weeks to arrange matters and to give the Home Government a chance to appoint my successor, and then I shall leave the diplomatic service. That, I think, should satisfy you."Alicia March remained silent, looking down. This then was her triumph! It was not really what she wanted. She had desired the greater triumph of having her way with Lady Carlyon. After a moment or two she spoke:"It is a small thing for which you are giving up your diplomatic career--let me see, you are not forty-five. I ask only that your wife come to my house once in a season."To this Sir Percy, with a cool smile, made answer:"I would prefer to give up the ambassadorship and retire from the diplomatic service."His contempt for her pierced Alicia March's soul, yet she began to have a dim apprehension of the nature of such men as Sir Percy Carlyon and Roger March, who could not be moved from the point of honour. Then, as there was nothing more to say, Sir Percy Carlyon bowed and left the room. He had not been in the house five minutes all told.Alicia drew her chair up to the fireside and watched the scurrying snow and listened to the wind clattering wildly under the eaves. She did not know whether to feel herself victor or vanquished. The time was, only a few years ago, when she would have glowed with the beauty and completeness of her revenge--all women are revengeful, but it is in general an unsated passion. Like most things ardently desired and long delayed, her triumph over Sir Percy Carlyon had lost its savour. She would be no better off if the Carlyons left Washington, and she felt tolerably sure that the next Ambassadress would be as equally obdurate towards her as was Lady Carlyon. Alicia March sighed and looked out of the window, where the fierce blasts tortured the budding trees, and the tender young grass shivered tinder the cruel sleet and snow. Alicia had felt herself strange in the position of an honourable, honoured woman, which Roger March had given her, but she felt more strange and forlorn when suddenly cast down into the abyss from which she had been raised. Pursued by intolerable loneliness, she returned to her own room, only to find herself more lonely still. While she sat in aimless reverie a letter in Colegrove's handwriting was brought into her. She looked at it with faint interest, but it lay in her lap unopened for half-an-hour; then she broke the seal and read:"I have just heard that Roger March has been mortally ill for months, and is probably dead by this time. I must see you soon."An hour later the same footman who had brought the note came to announce luncheon. Alicia was sitting in the same position, her eyes fixed upon the open letter. A strange leaven had been at work in her mind; an overwhelming desire to see and be with Roger March. Suddenly Sir Percy Carlyon and Colegrove had become insignificant to her; even her father was, for once, forgotten. She rose and went downstairs, trying to shake from her this new and strange obsession. What insanity would it be for her to go to Roger March! Almost every penny she had in the world, her house, her carriages, nine-tenths of her income, would be forfeited by the least attempt to see or communicate with her husband. General Talbott was awaiting her, and together they sat down in the gorgeous dining-room to the small round table which they commonly used when alone. General Talbott noticed nothing out of the usual in his daughter except that she was rather silent and ate nothing. Alicia herself scarcely recognised her own mind and heart and soul engaged in a conflict with her own closest and greatest interests. When luncheon was over, General Talbott said:"This wintry weather will keep me indoors for the afternoon."To which Alicia replied:"I, too, shall remain at home and shall not see any visitors."She went up to her boudoir, fighting at every step the impulse within her to take the first train for the Northwest. As a bar to her leaving the house, she rang for her maid and put on anégligéerobe and slippers, and lying down among the pillows of a luxurious sofa, drawn up to the fire, shut her eyes and tried to sleep. It was in vain. Before her came the vision of her husband, "mortally ill," as Colegrove had said. She had never seen Roger March ill in her life, but she had a prophetic vision of how he looked, pale and grey, with a gentle stoicism, a stern patience, and he was alone in an adobe hut among the far-off hills of the Northwest. If she went to him he would no doubt repulse her. She repeated this to herself resolutely, and in the act of repeating it rose and dressed herself, without the assistance of her maid, in a travelling dress, and put a few things in a travelling case. Two voices, each trying to drown the other, shrieked within her, the one representing the madness of going to Roger March, and the other dragging her against her will. She rang for her carriage and then, sitting at her desk, wrote a few lines to her father:"I have heard that my husband is fatally ill. I am going to him, although I lose most of what I have by it."She rang for a footman, gave him the note, and directed him not to give it to General Talbott unless she should not return in time for dinner. The footman, wondering, carried the travelling bag down and put it in the carriage. Alicia, as all human beings do when leaving their habitat for the last time, walked through the rooms which, up to that time, had been hers. They were exquisite in their beauty, luxury and comfort. In her bedroom she looked about her, saying to herself:"What madness is mine to jeopardise all of this, or rather to sacrifice it! I remember so well how he looked when he told me that if I ever attempted to see him I would sacrifice everything but a bare living, and he is a man of his word."But even as these thoughts went through her mind her feet bore her unwillingly towards the door. As she entered her boudoir she came face to face with Colegrove."Don't blame the flunkey," he said; "he tried to stop me, but I walked past him, and he knew perfectly well that if he had laid a finger on me I would knock him down. I saw your carriage at the door with luggage on it. Where are you going?""To my husband," replied Alicia in a low voice.Alicia had expected a strong protest, even that Colegrove would seek to restrain her, but, on the contrary, he looked at her with a smile in his keen eyes and said, as if answering a question:"Yes, I have nothing to say against your going. If Roger March is living you will lose every penny you have except a paltry thousand or so a year; then what I can offer you will probably bring you to my arms. Men who don't know me think I am greedy for money. So I am, but only to buy with it things more precious than money. But I would be glad to see you sacrifice all the money that Roger March gave you if it would bring you to me with nothing but the clothes on your back."Alicia had listened to him at first with a preoccupied air, but when his meaning dawned upon her she turned towards him with a look which implied that gratitude and respect for a man which every woman feels when he is ready to sacrifice money for love."So you see," he continued in the same cool, unmoved voice, "I sha'n't stop you; but I think, from what I hear, that you won't find Roger March alive. Then remember I have a claim on you, and it sha'n't grow rusty for want of urging. If you are ever my wife you needn't be afraid of telling me of your debts, as you were afraid to tell Roger March and General Talbott. I can live on five thousand a year, and the rest of what I have is for you to spend, and when that is spent I can make more. May I see you to your carriage?"Alicia, like a sleep-walker, passed down the stairs with him. The thought occurred to her that Colegrove's passion for her was like her own early infatuation for Sir Percy Carlyon, a thing which, rightly directed, might have reached the sublimest height of self-abnegation. But in the unfamiliar mood which possessed her, body and soul, neither Colegrove nor Sir Percy Carlyon seemed to matter. Her mind reverted to Roger March and remained concentrated upon him. When she was in the carriage Colegrove held out his hand and clasped Alicia's. She looked at him with strange and puzzled eyes. If only he had tried to keep her back; but, instead, he was rather urging her on upon the new path she was now treading. The footman asked where she would be driven, and Alicia replied mechanically:"To the railway station."In a little while, however, she remembered that she had not even an idea of Roger March's address, and changing the order, she directed the coachman to take her to Watson's offices. On the way she was saying to herself:"This is a dream; it is not possible that I should really go to my husband; I will turn back at the station or somewhere upon the long journey. This strange spirit will cease to trouble me; I shall be myself again and will return."Watson's offices were in a building not far from the railway station. When Alicia March alighted from her carriage and went into his rooms, the clerk, a soft-spoken young man, informed her that Mr. Watson was out, but was expected to return at any moment. Alicia sat down in the comfortable and well-furnished inner room, the walls covered with books, and everything bespeaking the successful and methodical man of business. She began to consider that Watson after all might refuse to give her Roger March's address. At that moment her eye fell upon the table, where lay Watson's address-book; in half-a-minute she had found Roger March's address. She had no need to copy it--she could not have forgotten it if she had tried. Then going back into the ante-room she said politely to the clerk:"I think I need not trouble Mr. Watson after all. Good-day."When she was in her carriage she looked at her watch. There was a train for the West leaving within the hour. She drove to the station, dismissed her carriage, then, buying her ticket, sat down to wait, feeling that she had consummated the act of madness. She wondered what General Talbott would think of her, whether she went or whether she stayed. No thought of Sir Percy Carlyon or Colegrove entered her mind. When the train was called she found a porter to carry her bag and walked through the gate. Then the habit of a lifetime made one last desperate effort; she walked back through another gate and called a cab, firmly resolving to go home. She got as far as the door of the station, and then, glancing at the clock, saw that there was still one minute before the train left. She turned and ran the length of the station through the gate towards the train, which was just about to move. The conductor, seeing her running towards it, caught her deftly by the arm and put her aboard, stepping after her himself. The porter found her a seat, and Alicia sank into it breathless and bewildered."I may yet turn back," she said to herself. "It is impossible that this impulse will hold out long enough for me to reach my husband."At eight o'clock that evening, as General Talbott was leaving his room for dinner, the footman put Alicia's note into his hands. He was an old man and things shook him as they had not done in the days when Sir Percy Carlyon thought him the most resolute of men. Nevertheless he maintained enough composure to say coolly to the servant:"Your mistress has been suddenly called out of town, and may be absent a week or two." Then he went down to dinner.When it was over, he did what an Englishman regards as an act of emergency--went out for an evening visit. He rang the bell of the British Embassy, asked to see Sir Percy Carlyon, and was shown into the library. When his card was handed to Sir Percy, who was taking his coffee with Lady Carlyon in the drawing-room, he said to her, growing a little pale:"It is General Talbott; it would be best for me to see him alone."They both thought that this meant another step in Alicia March's programme to ruin Sir Percy Carlyon.Sir Percy went into the library, and as soon as he had shaken hands General Talbott silently handed him Alicia's note. Sir Percy studied it attentively. He knew Alicia quite as well as she knew herself, and was as much astounded as she was at her action. Likewise he was incredulous that she should carry it through."It is four or five days' journey to the region where Roger March is," said Sir Percy to General Talbott, "and Mrs. March may change her mind in the meantime.""Yes," replied General Talbott, "but did you ever notice the strange appeal which bodily suffering makes to a woman? Anything on earth might have happened to March, and my daughter perhaps would have felt no inclination to rejoin him; but for him to be ill, suffering, dying, that was too much for her tender heart."Sir Percy remained silent; he, too, had often, noticed that few women can shut their ears to the cry of bodily pain."It is very perplexing," was all he could say, handing the note back to General Talbott."I am afraid, my dear fellow," said General Talbott, smiling a little, "that I am growing old, for I felt so agitated and disturbed when I got this note that I was compelled to seek a friend's companionship. I will not say counsel, for there is nothing to do in the matter. There are circumstances connected with this of a strictly private nature, which I do not feel at liberty to mention, so I can scarcely ask for advice.""You can, however, be perfectly sure of my sympathy, and if I can be of any assistance to you, at any moment, I think you will allow me the privilege. Come into the drawing-room now with me and see Lady Carlyon.""Please excuse me," answered General Talbott. "I scarcely feel equal to seeing any one but yourself this evening," for the recollection came to him that Lady Carlyon had not been over friendly to his poor Alicia, and it gave his honest old heart another pang.Sir Percy kept him for half-an-hour, then walked back with him through the silent streets. A thin mantle of snow was dissolving in a ghostly white mist, which rose toward a pallid night sky in which a haggard moon shone dimly. Sir Percy left General Talbott at his own door and returned to the Embassy. Lady Carlyon was still in the drawing-room, and when he entered and told her what had happened she remained silent and thoughtful. Presently she said:"Perhaps there is a regeneration for Mrs. March."It is not in the nature of men to believe in the reform of women, and Sir Percy said so, but Lady Carlyon answered him with the old feminine plea:"Her husband is ill, is suffering; she cannot remain away from him: she is a woman and not a monster."
XII
It took half-an-hour for the decrepit cab horse to drag the vehicle to the door of the splendid home which was now Alicia March's alone. As she entered she met Watson.
"Is my husband here?" she asked.
Watson raised his eyebrows in cool contempt.
"He is on his way to his ranch in the West, never to return. May I see you now for a few minutes to transact some necessary business?"
Alicia without a word led the way to her own boudoir, passing the door of her husband's study. The desk was clear and already men were at work packing the books which were all that Roger March took from the noble fittings of what had once been his home. It was so like removing the paraphernalia of a dead man that Alicia shuddered as she passed the door. Seated at a table in her own rooms, Watson passed over to her certain deeds, papers, and a bank-book showing a large sum of money deposited to her credit at the bank.
For all of these he required Alicia's signed receipt, which she mechanically gave, understanding little of the details of business. When it was over, Watson rose and took his hat.
"But," said Alicia, dazed and distraught by all that had passed so quickly, and helpless in the management of affairs, "what shall I do with these things? Will you take charge of them? I really don't--don't understand."
"Excuse me," answered Watson coldly, "it is impossible for me to act further in your affairs. If you wish any more information, and will notify me who is your man of business, I will consult with him at any time." And without saying good-morning, and putting his hat on in her presence, Watson left the room.
Alicia sat stunned, but dimly conscious of the indignity and affront put upon her. She was of a caste accustomed to all the niceties of respect, and she had managed to retain them until now. She began to ask herself, if she received such treatment from Watson, what might she expect from the whole world? And then there was an awful sense of loss in the mere absence of her husband. Often during the four years of her last marriage it had seemed to her as if her husband was the person who put everything out of joint. She had her establishment, her money, her liberty, and could do as she pleased, which was freely granted her, and life would have been delightful, but close to her always was this man before whom she must ever act the part of a perfectly upright woman. It was that which had produced the curious sense of dislocation and bewilderment which had always haunted her. Now that he was gone, however, the dislocation and bewilderment seemed greater than ever. She came of good fighting stock, and presently she found a little of her courage, and began to think what was best to do in order to save herself. The first thing, of course, was to have her father come to her. She wrote out a long and urgent cablegram, certain to bring General Talbott at once, and then ringing for a servant, sent it off. There would be time enough before General Talbott's arrival to consider what she should tell and what should remain unknown. Then the thought that Sir Percy and Lady Carlyon must surmise the truth came to her, and it was poignant enough to make itself felt even in those first hours of shock. She was no more able to rid herself of the involuntary hold which Sir Percy Carlyon had upon her than she had been a dozen years before. With the Carlyons, however, she had a strong card to play in General Talbott, who would soon be at hand. She sent for the servants and calmly informed them that her husband, whom she called Mr. March for the first time, would be absent indefinitely, and that the establishment would be kept up, and they could retain their positions if their conduct remained good.
In the afternoon Colegrove's card was brought up to her. She went down into one of the vast, silent drawing-rooms to see him. Colegrove was not pleased at this, and would rather have seen her in her boudoir, but nevertheless met her with a smile and debonair manner. Alicia looked pale, but her manner was quite composed.
"I hope you will pardon me for saying that I am afraid your husband has acted hastily," said Colegrove, when they were seated, "but of course the career of a man like that can't be closed so suddenly. All this will blow over in time, and five years from to-day we may see him in the Senate again. As far as I am concerned, I have lost a good friend, and I shall now be hounded into retirement, if not into prison."
He smiled as he spoke, showing his white even teeth, and Alicia could not but admire his cool courage in the face of what must have been to him a catastrophe scarcely less than her own. They were sitting in the embrasure of a window, and their low voices were lost in the expanse of the great room. Nevertheless Colegrove did not consider it an ideal place to say what he had come to say. He said it, however, glancing through the wide-open doors to see that no person was in hearing.
"March has accused himself of what no one believes, but has left you to bear the real burden. That is really what his alleged confession amounts to. I don't think that you owe him anything. If he stays away, as you tell me he means to, you may claim your freedom at any time, and then perhaps you will consider me, who would never leave you as March has done. For my own part, I, of course, can get a divorce any day I choose."
The same strange feeling of indignation came over Alicia which she felt when Colegrove had once before made implication against Roger March. Still she did not repulse him, who was the only human being that had voluntarily come to her that day, and she felt intuitively that he was the only one who would continue to come.
"You must not speak of such things," she said coldly, and rising.
Colegrove rose too. He had implanted the notion in her mind that March, after all, had sacrificed her, and that she was nothing to him. A new expression came into Alicia's speaking eyes. She looked fixedly at Colegrove and then bent her head in reflection.
"I go now," said Colegrove, "to fight my battle. I don't know how, or when, or where it will end, but if they drag me down I will, like Samson, drag down all I can with me, and the crash will be heard from one end of this continent to the other. Here is an address that will always find me."
He lifted her passive hand to his lips, put a card within it, and went away without another word.
Alicia spent the intervening hours between then and a solitary dinner walking up and down the great drawing-rooms. She did not give Colegrove a thought; her mind, agonised and tormented, was working upon the problem whether or not March, in the intensity of his anger, had deliberately sacrificed her.
The sense of fitness and good taste, which had never left Alicia Vernon, remained with Alicia March. She did not run away from Washington, but, having determined to take up the attitude of an injured woman, remained in her house, but in strict seclusion. Every day she took the air in a closed carriage, or, heavily veiled, walked for hours. She continually met her acquaintances, who spoke to her coolly and passed on, and Alicia did the same. A few persons, chiefly silly women and foolish young men, left cards for her, but Mrs. March, knowing that such backing was a detriment instead of a help, was excused at the door. She had received an immediate response from her father, who had taken the first steamer for America. Within a fortnight from the day Roger March left his home General Talbott arrived. He knew of March's resignation from the Senate, and Alicia, in the first hour of her father's arrival, put in his hand the newspaper which contained the charges andThe Congressional Record, with March's speech, and left him to draw his own conclusion. General Talbott read them through carefully, and then, taking Alicia's hand, said to her with tears in his brave old eyes:
"My child, you have been singled out for ill-treatment, and to bear the sins of others. March's conduct was inherently wrong, but it showed a cruel disregard of you not to make some show of fight for his name. Your father, however, will remain your steadfast friend."
The presence of General Talbott sensibly improved Alicia March's position in Washington. His old friends, of whom he had many, called to see him, and perforce left cards for Mrs. March. Among them was the card of Sir Percy Carlyon, but no card was left for Alicia, nor did Lady Carlyon's card accompany her husband's. Alicia observed this, but she did not choose to notice it openly at present. She meant that considerable time should pass before she began an active struggle to regain her lost position.
Early in May the great house was shut up and Alicia March and her father sailed for England. It was two years and a half before she reappeared in Washington. During that interval no one in Washington heard of March, except Watson, who received occasional communications from him on business. He seemed to have dropped out of the world; the depths of the Sierras is a very good hiding-place for a broken-hearted man.
Those two years and a half seemed to be unclouded for the Carlyons. Sir Percy found his mission exactly to his liking, and his prestige was steadily increased by his management of affairs. It even met with the approval of Lord Baudesert, who found himself unable to keep away from his beloved Washington. Mrs. Chantrey, whose hopes of being an Ambassadress had been dashed by Lord Baudesert's retirement, still cherished dreams of being Lady Baudesert, and was warmly encouraged in her aspirations by that wicked old gentleman during his whole visit to Washington. Eleanor Chantrey had remained unmarried. Her beauty and her fortune would have enabled her to make a choice of many brilliant marriages, but deep in her heart rankled something like disappointment. She had not been in love with Sir Percy Carlyon, but she would have married him if he had asked her, an attitude of mind commoner among women towards men than is generally supposed. Eleanor was certainly fitted to be an Ambassadress, but Lady Carlyon had fitted herself with consummate address for that lofty position. Lord Baudesert was openly delighted at the position which Lady Carlyon had made for herself. Her dignity, her sweetness and good sense had given her also a prestige which made her backing of the greatest value. Every woman in Washington society whose social and personal record was not like the driven snow was eager for the support of Lady Carlyon. With natural good judgment and acquired prudence Lady Lucy, as Lord Baudesert, like Sir Percy, called her, managed to escape every pitfall. She could neither be used, nor worked, wheedled, nor bullied, but pursued a course inspired alike by good taste and good feeling. Her two boys increased day by day in beauty and intelligence, and Sir Percy would have reckoned himself among the happiest as well as the most successful of men but for the memory of Alicia March. He was haunted by the thought, not without reason, that he was responsible for the tragedy which had befallen Roger March. He could readily imagine the motive which inspired March, and the thought of him dragged down by his wife's dishonour, seeking oblivion in the farthest corner of the continent, was a keen and ever-present regret to Sir Percy Carlyon. He had heard occasionally from General Talbott, who was abroad with his daughter. The great March house remained closed but tenantless, and Sir Percy surmised that Alicia March would in time return to the scene of her greatest triumphs and her deepest humiliation.
The echoes of the great railway scandal lasted during all of these two years and a half. Colegrove was not the man to go down without a terrific struggle. March's acknowledgment of the charges and his resignation would have been too strong for any except the strongest of men to withstand, but Colegrove, finding himself with his back to the wall, fought with a desperation worthy of a better cause. He had the money, the courage and the adroitness to drag everything into the courts, where the law's delay was a great help to him. So many powerful interests were involved that they made a bulwark around him. At the end of the two years and a half he was actually in much better case than he had been when he had first been pinned to the wall by his enemies, and his supply of ammunition had been increased. He had succeeded, by pouring out money like water, in enmeshing everybody and everything in a legal tangle from which no one could see a way out. His natural genius for making money was such that he could always contrive to make vast sums, and the wonder was, as with a clever pickpocket, why he did not satisfy himself with the brilliant success he could have made legitimately. Every two or three months during that time he communicated with Alicia March. He had an apparent reason for doing so, as he represented that the stocks held for her in his name were always earning dividends, and every letter contained a cheque. One of these letters informed her that his wife had got a divorce from him. The poor lady had in truth been goaded into it. Alicia March made no reference to this in the brief replies she sent to his letters.
XIII
One afternoon in December, nearly three years after Mrs. March had left Washington, Lady Carlyon was driving through the fashionable street in which the March house was situated. Lord Baudesert, who was on his annual visit to Washington, was in the carriage with her.
"Look, my Lady Lucy!" he said; "Mrs. March has come back, like another Joan of Arc, to defy her enemies. By Jupiter! that woman is as brave as Hector and Lord Nelson rolled in one. I have heard some pretty stories about her."
Some of these stories related to Lady Carlyon's husband, but Lord Baudesert gave no hint of this. Lady Carlyon glanced out of the carriage window and saw that the splendid March house was occupied. A handsome carriage, with a pink and white footman and coachman to match exactly, was standing before the door, and at that moment Alicia March, accompanied by General Talbott, came out and entered the carriage. Lady Carlyon, whose eyes were quick, got a brief but complete view of her.
"She seems quite unchanged," said Lady Carlyon to Lord Baudesert, "and doesn't look a day older than when she left Washington."
"How keen you women are about this thing of looks," replied Lord Baudesert, his black eyes twinkling under his beetling brows.
"It is you who make us value our youth and looks so much," said Lady Carlyon in response, smiling and composed, though all the while her heart was beating with pain--pain for herself and for her husband.
"Mrs. March, I see, has brought Talbott with her, and Talbott's backing, I take it, is worth that of ten ordinary men with pistols in their pockets," was Lord Baudesert's next remark.
"Sir Percy can never forget his obligations to General Talbott," replied Lady Carlyon.
"And Alicia March won't let him forget them if he would." Then, catching sight of Mrs. Chantrey taking her constitutional, Lord Baudesert halted the carriage, scrambled out, and was soon promenading up and down Connecticut Avenue with that eternally hopeful lady, to her undisguised rapture. She lamented to Lord Baudesert Eleanor's hardness of heart toward the other sex, and Lord Baudesert was lauding the unexpected good sense of the three Vereker girls, each one of whom had married a curate, and could not expect to do any better.
Lady Carlyon, when she reached home, and was alone with her husband, told him of the new arrivals.
"You must prepare to meet them," she said resolutely, "and even to have them to dinner."
Sir Percy sighed heavily.
"What have I not brought upon you, my poor child?" he said.
"Nothing I cannot bear," responded Lady Carlyon.
Three days afterwards the expected happened--Alicia March and General Talbott called at the British Embassy. They came at an hour when they were sure to find the Carlyons at home. As Lady Carlyon had said, Mrs. March gave no outward sign of the stress and storm through which she must have passed. She and Lady Carlyon met and talked as do two women of the world who mutually hate and distrust each other, but who expect to meet at dinner. Mrs. March spoke pleasantly of her travels with her father. They had spent two winters in Egypt, and their summers cruising on the Dalmatian coast, but, after all, she said, Washington was the most agreeable place of all the winter resorts she had ever known, and she had determined to pass her winters there hereafter. She did not tell Lady Carlyon of the strange desire she felt to get back to the same orbit in which Sir Percy moved, nor of the equally strange inability she had to forget her husband. She had every reason to remain abroad, where the catastrophe of her Washington life was little known, and where the prestige of her father's name was greater and more general, but that strange instinct which makes a murderer return to the scene of his crime will always make a woman like Alicia March return to the scene of her adventures.
Lady Carlyon said to the General what she could not very well avoid saying, that she hoped he would soon come to dine with them, but named no date. It required all Sir Percy's self-control to prevent General Talbott from seeing how unwelcome his daughter was at the British Embassy. Nevertheless, this was accomplished, and after a longish visit General Talbott went away feeling that in Sir Percy and Lady Carlyon his poor Alicia had two staunch friends.
There was, however, no escape for the Carlyons for the dinner invitation to Alicia March with General Talbott, and a few days afterwards it was despatched and promptly accepted. Mrs. March's presence at the British Embassy did much to re-establish her, for there were many persons, especially in public life, who surmised the truth, and that Roger March was simply lying like a gentleman when he took the blame upon himself. The smart set, however, does not always keep labels on public men and things, and besides its members have short memories. Roger March's name was never mentioned by his wife or in her presence; Alicia March took up the attitude of an injured woman who bears in silence the defection of her husband; therefore, by the exercise of tact, courage and industry, knowing where to leave cards and where not, she found herself steadily regaining her former position in Washington society. When it was getting on best, however, it was suddenly retarded by the appearance of Colegrove, and his frequent visits to Mrs. March. Alicia knew the world too well not to understand the risk of any association with Colegrove. But Colegrove, himself, had impressed upon her at his first visit that she must assume the attitude of a perfectly innocent woman and not decline his visits. He had in him such power of coercing her that Alicia accepted his views, as most others did when brought into contact with him.
Alicia never saw him alone--she always had her father to act as sheepdog. When General Talbott was not at home Colegrove was always informed that Mrs. March asked to be excused. Colegrove took his rebuffs coolly, and continued to call during the visiting hours when he was likely to be seen at Mrs. March's door. He was in the act of pulling the bell on the day when Lady Carlyon called to leave cards on Mrs. March. Twice afterwards in the same week Lady Carlyon saw Colegrove evidently coming from Mrs. March's house, and she spoke of it to Sir Percy. The very next day came a dinner invitation from Alicia March asking Lady Carlyon to name an evening when she and Sir Percy could dine with Mrs. March and General Talbott. Sir Percy ground his teeth when Lady Carlyon was writing a conventional note of acceptance, naming a date some weeks ahead.
The week before the dinner a note came from Lady Carlyon saying that Sir Percy and herself were asked to the White House to meet a distinguished Englishman visiting the United States, and must, therefore, ask to be excused from Mrs. March's dinner. Alicia replied with an equally conventional note. A fortnight later she called at the Embassy, and with her sweetest voice and manner asked Lady Carlyon to name another date for dining with her. Again Lady Carlyon named a date. The morning of the dinner Sir Percy went into his wife's boudoir, and after standing silent for a while with an angry and sombre face, said to her:
"I can't have you dining with Alicia March. I always hated it, and I find that man Colegrove is at her house a great deal. You must have a headache, cold or something by which you can excuse yourself. I will go; I am not better than Alicia March, but you are ten thousand times better than she."
Usually Lady Carlyon could reason with her husband, but on this occasion he was quite intractable. Lady Carlyon therefore wrote a note of excuse and secluded herself for the day, alleging illness. Sir Percy went to the dinner, and found an odd conglomeration of guests, very much like that collected by the rich man in the Bible for his son's wedding. Alicia was perfectly conscious of the collection she had made, but bore herself with her usual dignity and outward composure. Even General Talbott, who had felt a secret uneasiness concerning Alicia's reception in Washington, was conscious that her dinner guests were of a somewhat mixed variety, and hinted as much to her the next day. He even mentioned that Colegrove's visits to the house might be misunderstood. Alicia was of the same opinion. Colegrove still possessed for her the interest a woman feels for a man who is deeply interested in her, and, besides, Colegrove was the only man she had ever known who understood her inability to make any income she might have meet her expenses. He never scolded her, but seemed to think her continual want of money an amiable weakness. Nevertheless Alicia, growing frightened at the changing attitude of society toward her, wrote a note to Colegrove imploring him not to come again to see her. In reply, Colegrove called to ask for an explanation. He caught Alicia just as she was entering the house. Without waiting for an invitation, he walked into the great drawing-room, where their last private interview had occurred, nearly three years before.
"Of course," said Alicia, when they were out of hearing, though not out of sight, "you are trying to compromise me."
"All is fair in love," replied Colegrove calmly; "you had better let me come openly, and ask me to dinner."
Alicia would make no promise, but when she was alone in her boudoir she reflected upon the strangeness of the American character. Two Americans loved her; one had made a stupendous sacrifice for her, and the other was pursuing her with an ingenuity of persistence, a handiness of resource, which was new and puzzling to her English mind. And then as women do who know how to think, she began to consider with a kind of sad wonder why she could not emancipate herself from the influence of Colegrove, and from that of Sir Percy Carlyon, and, what was strangest of all, from the memory of Roger March, and did not realise that men only have the art of forgetting.
"No woman, alas! forgets," she thought to herself, and, rising, went to her husband's rooms, and, closing the door after her, she walked about them aimlessly. Roger March had done her a fearful injury; such quixotism as his could benefit no one. She felt a deep resentment against him, but that was far from forgetting him. In the four years and a half of her life with Roger March there had been a continual sense of discomfort; his personality, agreeable though it was, seemed perpetually at war with her secret self. She had taken him as the necessary adjunct of his fortune, and she should have been glad to get rid of him, if only she could forget him. But she found herself continually thinking about him, wondering what kind of existence he led, and if he ever felt any regret as to what he had done. She had thought herself the coolest-headed and best-balanced of women, but she seemed, as she grew older, to be losing rather than gaining her self-possession.
Things had come to such a pass by the end of the season that Alicia was slipping back socially. One thing which she felt necessary for her to do, if she was to remain in Washington, was to have Lady Carlyon seen at her house. She could not for ever go on giving invitations which were cleverly evaded. The only thing was to seek Lady Carlyon and bring the matter to an issue. To do this it would be necessary to take Lady Carlyon unawares, for she would certainly excuse herself if Mrs. March called at the Embassy at an unusual time, and there would be no chance for her if she went at the customary visiting hour. Alicia therefore watched for her opportunity and determined to seize it anywhere and at any time. It came most unexpectedly.
One night she and General Talbott were at the theatre, and when the first act of the play was half over Sir Percy and Lady Carlyon appeared in an upper box alone. Sir Percy, after seating his wife comfortably, said a few words and went out, carrying his hat and great-coat. Lady Carlyon, sitting far back in the box, watched the play and was quite unobserved by any one in the audience except Alicia March. When General Talbott went out of the theatre after the curtain came down on the first act, Alicia, seeing the way clear before her, climbed the narrow stairs to the box and walked in on Lady Carlyon. Never did Lady Carlyon have a more unwelcome guest, or one with whom she less desired a private conversation. She greeted Alicia politely, however, and said:
"Sir Percy will return in a little while. He had an appointment for half-an-hour this evening, and brought me to the play to await him."
"I am very glad," replied Alicia in her sweetest voice, "that he is absent, because I wish to ask you a question of the most private nature."
Then she took a chair, and the two women, each perfect mistress of herself, began the duello. "It is," continued Alicia softly, "whether you have any real objection to entering my house?"
Lady Carlyon remained silent, and after a minute Alicia March spoke again:
"I see you have; I may as well speak frankly. As an Englishwoman, and strangely situated as I am, I can't expect any recognition if the British Ambassador, who is supposed to be one of my oldest acquaintances, and certainly my father's greatest friend, refuses to allow his wife, or his wife refuses, to come to my house. It is not much to ask."
"Sir Percy feels that it is a great deal to ask," replied Lady Carlyon, a faint colour appearing in her usually pale cheeks.
Their voices were so low that not a person, even those in the next box, could make out what they were saying. All over the theatre was the buzz of conversation, and the brilliant lights penetrated even the dim interior of the upper box.
"Sir Percy, then," said Alicia after a pause, "has told you all?"
Lady Carlyon inclined her head silently, her eyes lighting up with anger as she looked resolutely in Alicia March's calm face.
"Tell him from me, please," Alicia continued after a pause, while the two women steadily eyed each other, "that he may take his choice, either of sending you to my house or having that early story between us made known to certain persons in power. You know these Americans are a prudish people, and, ridiculous as it may seem, the fact of the relations between your husband and myself in our youth being made known, and the fact that he has been at my house and I have been to yours, would cause an intimation to him that he had better leave Washington. You may tell Sir Percy, also, that your absence from my house is perplexing and troubling to my father, and for that reason, if for no other, I mean that you shall come to my house, or Sir Percy's diplomatic career in Washington will be ended."
"Sir Percy is not a man to yield to threats," replied Sir Percy's wife. By this time her cheeks were crimson, but her voice was still composed.
"These are not threats, but promises. I grant you I could not do this except in Washington. I should be laughed at anywhere in Europe if I attempted to make known certain facts about Sir Percy's early life, and I could not do him the slightest harm, but you see these people are very different. Ambassadors have been quietly notified, before this, that their presence was not acceptable. The public are not taken into the confidence of the people in power, nevertheless Ambassadors are ruined. There will not be a public scandal; if there were my father would know it, and I believe that he would shoot himself. All that I promise will be done very quietly, but it will be done, if you and Sir Percy continue obstinate. I shall be at home all day to-morrow and shall expect Sir Percy to call to see me. Good-evening."
She rose and left the box, and as she passed through the narrow lobby outside she came face to face with Sir Percy Carlyon.
"I have just had an interview with Lady Carlyon," said Alicia March composedly, "and I shall expect to see you at my house some time to-morrow."
Sir Percy bowed in silence without showing the least surprise, and stepped into the box. Lady Carlyon had taken a chair well at the front of the box, and with her slender, shapely arm resting upon the ledge, was in full view of the house. Her face was quite calm, but a deep flush upon her usually pale cheeks showed Sir Percy that the interview between her and Alicia March had been of an unusual nature. Obeying an indication from his wife, Sir Percy sat also in full view of the audience and of Alicia March, once more among the audience. She had reached her seat before General Talbott's return, and he had no idea that she had left it during his absence.
"Look, my love!" he said, "there are the Carlyons. Lady Carlyon is looking remarkably handsome and animated to-night. I think I will go and speak with them during the next interval."
Alicia smiled, but said nothing. It would be an added torment to the Carlyons to have General Talbott with them.
When the curtain came down for the second time General Talbott, as good as his word, went to the Carlyons' box. Alicia, from below, saw him cordially received, and Lady Carlyon, all smiles and composure, talking with him. He left the box just before the curtain went up, and when the Carlyons were alone Sir Percy said to his wife:
"Would you like to leave the theatre now?"
"By no means," answered Lady Carlyon promptly; "we will remain through the play, and you must wait until then to know what has happened."
"You are a brave creature, my Lady Lucy," responded her husband.
The Carlyons were among the last people to leave the theatre, and when they were in their carriage Lady Carlyon told her husband what had happened. He heard it in silence and made no comment. Later, when they had reached home and were alone, Lady Carlyon would have spoken of it again, but Sir Percy stopped her.
"Not any more to-night," he said; "to-morrow will be time enough."
XIV
Next morning, although it was the beginning of spring, the snow was falling, and a biting northeast wind made the day look like one in December. Lady Carlyon was sitting in her morning-room with her two beautiful children at her knees when Sir Percy entered about twelve o'clock. Nothing is so beautiful and interesting as a young mother with her children, and Sir Percy, standing on the hearth-rug, paid his wife the tribute of admiration. She played with the children and danced about the room with them as if she were a child herself. Sir Percy was not surprised at her cheerfulness; he had ever found in her that admirable quality of courage and gaiety of heart in the presence of danger which is half the battle. It is commonly observed that this presence of danger produces in brave men a quickening of the intellect as well as an exhilaration of spirits, and it is equally true of brave women. Lady Carlyon was singularly fearless; her pride was up in arms. Alicia March had made claim to some part and lot in Sir Percy Carlyon's life, a claim which Lady Carlyon treated with fine scorn, and Alicia March had made threats and had assumed the power of disposing of Sir Percy Carlyon's career. This aroused in Lady Carlyon the spirit of defiance. These things brought smiles to her face, a new light to her eyes, and a haughtier carriage to her delicate head. Sir Percy knew well these signs. Presently, however, the children were sent away and the husband and wife were alone.
"I am going now to see Mrs. March," said Sir Percy coolly; "I think I may as well give up the fight. Alicia March is not the woman to make idle threats, and she can do precisely what she says she can. Besides, General Talbott has to be considered. It will be difficult to keep such an affair from him, and he is one of these mediæval men, something like March himself, of whom no one can predict anything when a question of his own or his daughter's honour is involved. I can quietly resign and go away. We shall have enough to live upon modestly, and in some quiet corner of England we can forget Alicia March, and live for each other and our children. It is a downfall for you, my Lady Lucy, and I am the one who has brought it upon you."
Lady Carlyon went up to him, laying her hand on his arm, and said with sparkling eyes:
"Give up the fight, do you mean, and let Mrs. March drive you from your position?"
"There is nothing else to be done," replied Sir Percy quietly. "Think for a moment; I can't make a fight without making it public. If I were alone I shouldn't care for the publicity, but you--not for twenty ambassadorships would I bring you into anything like this."
Lady Carlyon dropped her head upon his shoulder and burst into tears, which wrung his heart, but did not change his resolution. Half-an-hour afterwards he was ushered into Mrs. March's boudoir, where Alicia waited for him. Sir Percy refused the chair which she offered him and remained standing, hat in hand. Alicia March felt a sense of triumph which glowed in her eyes; Sir Percy had wearied of her and had scorned her, but in the end, when he had reached the height of his ambition, she had brought him to heel roundly after nearly nineteen years.
"Lady Carlyon gave me your message," he said, when the first cool greetings were exchanged. "You are quite able to do all that you have threatened. If I were alone I should make a fight, but for Lady Carlyon's sake I am willing to surrender. I shall require a few weeks to arrange matters and to give the Home Government a chance to appoint my successor, and then I shall leave the diplomatic service. That, I think, should satisfy you."
Alicia March remained silent, looking down. This then was her triumph! It was not really what she wanted. She had desired the greater triumph of having her way with Lady Carlyon. After a moment or two she spoke:
"It is a small thing for which you are giving up your diplomatic career--let me see, you are not forty-five. I ask only that your wife come to my house once in a season."
To this Sir Percy, with a cool smile, made answer:
"I would prefer to give up the ambassadorship and retire from the diplomatic service."
His contempt for her pierced Alicia March's soul, yet she began to have a dim apprehension of the nature of such men as Sir Percy Carlyon and Roger March, who could not be moved from the point of honour. Then, as there was nothing more to say, Sir Percy Carlyon bowed and left the room. He had not been in the house five minutes all told.
Alicia drew her chair up to the fireside and watched the scurrying snow and listened to the wind clattering wildly under the eaves. She did not know whether to feel herself victor or vanquished. The time was, only a few years ago, when she would have glowed with the beauty and completeness of her revenge--all women are revengeful, but it is in general an unsated passion. Like most things ardently desired and long delayed, her triumph over Sir Percy Carlyon had lost its savour. She would be no better off if the Carlyons left Washington, and she felt tolerably sure that the next Ambassadress would be as equally obdurate towards her as was Lady Carlyon. Alicia March sighed and looked out of the window, where the fierce blasts tortured the budding trees, and the tender young grass shivered tinder the cruel sleet and snow. Alicia had felt herself strange in the position of an honourable, honoured woman, which Roger March had given her, but she felt more strange and forlorn when suddenly cast down into the abyss from which she had been raised. Pursued by intolerable loneliness, she returned to her own room, only to find herself more lonely still. While she sat in aimless reverie a letter in Colegrove's handwriting was brought into her. She looked at it with faint interest, but it lay in her lap unopened for half-an-hour; then she broke the seal and read:
"I have just heard that Roger March has been mortally ill for months, and is probably dead by this time. I must see you soon."
An hour later the same footman who had brought the note came to announce luncheon. Alicia was sitting in the same position, her eyes fixed upon the open letter. A strange leaven had been at work in her mind; an overwhelming desire to see and be with Roger March. Suddenly Sir Percy Carlyon and Colegrove had become insignificant to her; even her father was, for once, forgotten. She rose and went downstairs, trying to shake from her this new and strange obsession. What insanity would it be for her to go to Roger March! Almost every penny she had in the world, her house, her carriages, nine-tenths of her income, would be forfeited by the least attempt to see or communicate with her husband. General Talbott was awaiting her, and together they sat down in the gorgeous dining-room to the small round table which they commonly used when alone. General Talbott noticed nothing out of the usual in his daughter except that she was rather silent and ate nothing. Alicia herself scarcely recognised her own mind and heart and soul engaged in a conflict with her own closest and greatest interests. When luncheon was over, General Talbott said:
"This wintry weather will keep me indoors for the afternoon."
To which Alicia replied:
"I, too, shall remain at home and shall not see any visitors."
She went up to her boudoir, fighting at every step the impulse within her to take the first train for the Northwest. As a bar to her leaving the house, she rang for her maid and put on anégligéerobe and slippers, and lying down among the pillows of a luxurious sofa, drawn up to the fire, shut her eyes and tried to sleep. It was in vain. Before her came the vision of her husband, "mortally ill," as Colegrove had said. She had never seen Roger March ill in her life, but she had a prophetic vision of how he looked, pale and grey, with a gentle stoicism, a stern patience, and he was alone in an adobe hut among the far-off hills of the Northwest. If she went to him he would no doubt repulse her. She repeated this to herself resolutely, and in the act of repeating it rose and dressed herself, without the assistance of her maid, in a travelling dress, and put a few things in a travelling case. Two voices, each trying to drown the other, shrieked within her, the one representing the madness of going to Roger March, and the other dragging her against her will. She rang for her carriage and then, sitting at her desk, wrote a few lines to her father:
"I have heard that my husband is fatally ill. I am going to him, although I lose most of what I have by it."
She rang for a footman, gave him the note, and directed him not to give it to General Talbott unless she should not return in time for dinner. The footman, wondering, carried the travelling bag down and put it in the carriage. Alicia, as all human beings do when leaving their habitat for the last time, walked through the rooms which, up to that time, had been hers. They were exquisite in their beauty, luxury and comfort. In her bedroom she looked about her, saying to herself:
"What madness is mine to jeopardise all of this, or rather to sacrifice it! I remember so well how he looked when he told me that if I ever attempted to see him I would sacrifice everything but a bare living, and he is a man of his word."
But even as these thoughts went through her mind her feet bore her unwillingly towards the door. As she entered her boudoir she came face to face with Colegrove.
"Don't blame the flunkey," he said; "he tried to stop me, but I walked past him, and he knew perfectly well that if he had laid a finger on me I would knock him down. I saw your carriage at the door with luggage on it. Where are you going?"
"To my husband," replied Alicia in a low voice.
Alicia had expected a strong protest, even that Colegrove would seek to restrain her, but, on the contrary, he looked at her with a smile in his keen eyes and said, as if answering a question:
"Yes, I have nothing to say against your going. If Roger March is living you will lose every penny you have except a paltry thousand or so a year; then what I can offer you will probably bring you to my arms. Men who don't know me think I am greedy for money. So I am, but only to buy with it things more precious than money. But I would be glad to see you sacrifice all the money that Roger March gave you if it would bring you to me with nothing but the clothes on your back."
Alicia had listened to him at first with a preoccupied air, but when his meaning dawned upon her she turned towards him with a look which implied that gratitude and respect for a man which every woman feels when he is ready to sacrifice money for love.
"So you see," he continued in the same cool, unmoved voice, "I sha'n't stop you; but I think, from what I hear, that you won't find Roger March alive. Then remember I have a claim on you, and it sha'n't grow rusty for want of urging. If you are ever my wife you needn't be afraid of telling me of your debts, as you were afraid to tell Roger March and General Talbott. I can live on five thousand a year, and the rest of what I have is for you to spend, and when that is spent I can make more. May I see you to your carriage?"
Alicia, like a sleep-walker, passed down the stairs with him. The thought occurred to her that Colegrove's passion for her was like her own early infatuation for Sir Percy Carlyon, a thing which, rightly directed, might have reached the sublimest height of self-abnegation. But in the unfamiliar mood which possessed her, body and soul, neither Colegrove nor Sir Percy Carlyon seemed to matter. Her mind reverted to Roger March and remained concentrated upon him. When she was in the carriage Colegrove held out his hand and clasped Alicia's. She looked at him with strange and puzzled eyes. If only he had tried to keep her back; but, instead, he was rather urging her on upon the new path she was now treading. The footman asked where she would be driven, and Alicia replied mechanically:
"To the railway station."
In a little while, however, she remembered that she had not even an idea of Roger March's address, and changing the order, she directed the coachman to take her to Watson's offices. On the way she was saying to herself:
"This is a dream; it is not possible that I should really go to my husband; I will turn back at the station or somewhere upon the long journey. This strange spirit will cease to trouble me; I shall be myself again and will return."
Watson's offices were in a building not far from the railway station. When Alicia March alighted from her carriage and went into his rooms, the clerk, a soft-spoken young man, informed her that Mr. Watson was out, but was expected to return at any moment. Alicia sat down in the comfortable and well-furnished inner room, the walls covered with books, and everything bespeaking the successful and methodical man of business. She began to consider that Watson after all might refuse to give her Roger March's address. At that moment her eye fell upon the table, where lay Watson's address-book; in half-a-minute she had found Roger March's address. She had no need to copy it--she could not have forgotten it if she had tried. Then going back into the ante-room she said politely to the clerk:
"I think I need not trouble Mr. Watson after all. Good-day."
When she was in her carriage she looked at her watch. There was a train for the West leaving within the hour. She drove to the station, dismissed her carriage, then, buying her ticket, sat down to wait, feeling that she had consummated the act of madness. She wondered what General Talbott would think of her, whether she went or whether she stayed. No thought of Sir Percy Carlyon or Colegrove entered her mind. When the train was called she found a porter to carry her bag and walked through the gate. Then the habit of a lifetime made one last desperate effort; she walked back through another gate and called a cab, firmly resolving to go home. She got as far as the door of the station, and then, glancing at the clock, saw that there was still one minute before the train left. She turned and ran the length of the station through the gate towards the train, which was just about to move. The conductor, seeing her running towards it, caught her deftly by the arm and put her aboard, stepping after her himself. The porter found her a seat, and Alicia sank into it breathless and bewildered.
"I may yet turn back," she said to herself. "It is impossible that this impulse will hold out long enough for me to reach my husband."
At eight o'clock that evening, as General Talbott was leaving his room for dinner, the footman put Alicia's note into his hands. He was an old man and things shook him as they had not done in the days when Sir Percy Carlyon thought him the most resolute of men. Nevertheless he maintained enough composure to say coolly to the servant:
"Your mistress has been suddenly called out of town, and may be absent a week or two." Then he went down to dinner.
When it was over, he did what an Englishman regards as an act of emergency--went out for an evening visit. He rang the bell of the British Embassy, asked to see Sir Percy Carlyon, and was shown into the library. When his card was handed to Sir Percy, who was taking his coffee with Lady Carlyon in the drawing-room, he said to her, growing a little pale:
"It is General Talbott; it would be best for me to see him alone."
They both thought that this meant another step in Alicia March's programme to ruin Sir Percy Carlyon.
Sir Percy went into the library, and as soon as he had shaken hands General Talbott silently handed him Alicia's note. Sir Percy studied it attentively. He knew Alicia quite as well as she knew herself, and was as much astounded as she was at her action. Likewise he was incredulous that she should carry it through.
"It is four or five days' journey to the region where Roger March is," said Sir Percy to General Talbott, "and Mrs. March may change her mind in the meantime."
"Yes," replied General Talbott, "but did you ever notice the strange appeal which bodily suffering makes to a woman? Anything on earth might have happened to March, and my daughter perhaps would have felt no inclination to rejoin him; but for him to be ill, suffering, dying, that was too much for her tender heart."
Sir Percy remained silent; he, too, had often, noticed that few women can shut their ears to the cry of bodily pain.
"It is very perplexing," was all he could say, handing the note back to General Talbott.
"I am afraid, my dear fellow," said General Talbott, smiling a little, "that I am growing old, for I felt so agitated and disturbed when I got this note that I was compelled to seek a friend's companionship. I will not say counsel, for there is nothing to do in the matter. There are circumstances connected with this of a strictly private nature, which I do not feel at liberty to mention, so I can scarcely ask for advice."
"You can, however, be perfectly sure of my sympathy, and if I can be of any assistance to you, at any moment, I think you will allow me the privilege. Come into the drawing-room now with me and see Lady Carlyon."
"Please excuse me," answered General Talbott. "I scarcely feel equal to seeing any one but yourself this evening," for the recollection came to him that Lady Carlyon had not been over friendly to his poor Alicia, and it gave his honest old heart another pang.
Sir Percy kept him for half-an-hour, then walked back with him through the silent streets. A thin mantle of snow was dissolving in a ghostly white mist, which rose toward a pallid night sky in which a haggard moon shone dimly. Sir Percy left General Talbott at his own door and returned to the Embassy. Lady Carlyon was still in the drawing-room, and when he entered and told her what had happened she remained silent and thoughtful. Presently she said:
"Perhaps there is a regeneration for Mrs. March."
It is not in the nature of men to believe in the reform of women, and Sir Percy said so, but Lady Carlyon answered him with the old feminine plea:
"Her husband is ill, is suffering; she cannot remain away from him: she is a woman and not a monster."