Chapter XXIX: Mrs. Cromwell’s Oldest Daughter

ALL OF the players except three had returned to the clubhouse before the close of the fine April afternoon, and, after an interval in the locker rooms, had departed either in their cars or strolling away on foot, homeward bound to the pleasant groups of suburban houses east of the country club. Westward lay the links, between ploughed fields and groves of beech and ash and maple, a spacious park of rolling meadows with a far boundary of woodland, and, beyond that, nothing but a smoky sunset. All was quiet; there were no sounds from within the clubhouse, nor came any from the links; and although no kine wound slowly o’er the lea and no ploughman plodded his weary way, the impending twilight in such a peace might well have stirred a poetic observer to murmurous quotation from the Elegy. Nevertheless, in this sweet evening silence, emotion was present and not peaceful.

There was emotion far out upon the links, and there was more upon the western veranda of the clubhouse where two ladies sat, not speaking, but gazing intently toward where the dim and hazy great sun was immersing itself in the smoke of the horizon. These two emotional ladies were sisters; that was obvious, for they shared a type of young matronly fairness so decidedly that a photograph of one might have been mistaken, at first glance, for that of the other.

A student of families, observing them, would have guessed immediately that their mother was a fair woman, probably still comely with robust good health, and of no inconsiderable weight in body as well as in general prestige. The two daughters were large young women, but graceful still; not so large as they were going to be some day, nor less well-favoured than they had been in their slenderer girlhood. They were alike, also, in the affluence displayed by the sober modishness of what they wore; and other tokens of this affluence appeared upon the club driveway, where waited two shining, black, closed cars, each with a trim and speechless driver unenclosed. The sisters were again alike in the expectancy with which they gazed out upon the broad avenue of the golf links; but there was a difference in their expressions;—for the expectancy of the younger one was a frowning expectancy, an indignant expectancy, while the expectancy of the other, who was only a year or two the older, appeared to be a timid and apprehensive expectancy—an expectancy, in fact, of calamity.

This elder sister was the one who broke the long silence, though not by uttering words, the sound she produced being an exclamatory gasp and but faintly audible. It appeared to be comprehended as definite information, however, by the younger sister.

“Where, Mildred?” she asked. “I don’t see them yet.”

The other’s apprehension was emphasized upon her troubled forehead, as she nodded in the direction of the far boundary of the links. There, upon the low crest of rising ground capped with the outermost green, appeared six tiny figures, dwindled by the distance and dimmed by the mist that rose into the failing light. For the sun was now so far below the dark horizon that the last ruddiness grew dingy in the sky.

“Yes,” said the younger sister, and her angry frown deepened. “It’s they.”

“Oh, Anne!” the older murmured. “Oh, Anne!”

“Yes, I should say so!” this Anne returned, decisively. “I certainly intend to express myself to _my_ husband, Mildred.”

Mildred shook her head unhappily. “If I only could to mine! But that’s just what I can’t do.”

“I don’t know,” the other said. “I think in your place I should; though it’s true I can’t imagine myself in your place, Mildred. My husband has his faults, and one of ’em’s the way he’s letting himself be used to-day, but I can’t imagine his behaving as your husband is behaving. Not _that_ way!”

She made an impatient gesture toward the west, where the six figures had left the green and were now moving toward the clubhouse, three of them playing deliberately as they came, with three smaller figures, the caddies, in advance. One of the players detached himself, keeping to the southern stretch of the fairway; while the two others, a man and a woman, kept to the northern, walking together, each halting close by when the other paused for a stroke.

“Can you make out which is which, Anne?” the older sister inquired in a voice of faint hope. “Isn’t it John who’s playing off there by himself, and Hobart she keeps so close to her?”

“Not very likely!” Anne returned with a short laugh. “She’s using _my_ husband as a chaperon strictly, and I must say he’s behaving like a tactful one. It’s your John she ‘keeps so close to her’—as usual, Mildred!”

Mildred made merely a desolate sound, and then the sisters resumed the troubled silence that falls between people who have long since discussed to a conclusion every detail of an unhappy affair, and can only await its further development.

The three players came nearer slowly, growing dimmer in the evening haze as they grew larger; until at last it was difficult to see them at all. Other things were as dim as they, the player to the south found to his cost; and, finally deciding to lose no more balls that day, he crossed the fairway to his competitors.

“I’m through, John,” he called, cheerfully. “It’s no use in the world trying to play out these last two holes.”

“I don’t suppose it is,” the other man assented. “Julietta rather wanted to, though.” He turned to the tall girl beside him. “Hobart says——”

“I heard him!” she said, laughing a light laugh, a little taunting in its silveriness. “Hobart’s a well-trained husband. You know what that is, don’t you, John? A well-trained husband is one who doesn’t dare to call his soul his own. Hobart’s been worrying this last half-hour about what Mrs. Simms will say to him for keeping her waiting.”

“You’re right about that, Julietta,” Mr. Hobart Simms agreed. “My wife’s a pretty amiable lady; but I’ve kept her waiting longer than I like to, and old John’s done the same thing. So, as he’s probably in the same apologetic state I’m in, and it’s ridiculous to try to play these last two holes in the pitch dark anyhow, I suggest we——”

The girl interrupted him, though it was to his brother-in-law that she addressed herself. “_Are_ you in the ‘same apologetic state’ that Hobart is, John?” she asked; and there was an undercurrent in her voice that seemed to ask more than appeared upon the surface. She seemed to challenge, in fact, and yet to plead. “Are you as afraid of Mrs. Tower as Hobart is of Mrs. Simms, John?”

Mr. Tower laughed placatively. “My dear Julietta! Of course if you’d like to play it out——”

“There!” Julietta said, gaily triumphant. “You see he wants to, himself. I believe you’re the one man I know who isn’t terrorized by a wife, John.” She stepped closer to him, speaking through the darkness in a warm, soft voice, almost a whisper. “But then you’re a wonderful man, anyhow—the most wonderful I ever knew, John.”

“Oh, no!” He laughed deprecatingly, and, pleased with her, yet embarrassed by his modesty, coughed lightly for a moment or two. “Of course I’m not; but I do value your thinking so, Julietta. I appreciate it very deeply indeed.”

“Are you _sure_ you do?” she said in a hurried whisper, so low that he could just hear it. Then she turned briskly toward his brother-in-law, who stood at a little distance, waiting their pleasure. “Run along, Hobart, and please tell Mrs. Tower I haven’t kidnapped him;—he’s staying to play it out with me of his own free will. And please pay all the caddies off and let them go. We don’t need them, and they’re dying to get home.”

He was obedient, and from the clubhouse veranda, where lights now shone, it could be discerned that the party on the links had broken up. The caddies ran scurrying by, their shrill outcries disturbing the air about them, and, in their wake, the slight figure of Mr. Hobart Simms appeared within the radius of illumination from the building.

“They’re coming,” Anne Simms said to her sister. “Don’t let them see anything.”

Mr. Simms mounted the dozen steps that led up to the veranda. “Dear me, Anne!” he said. “I’m afraid you’ve been waiting quite a time. I can’t tell you how sorry——”

But she cut his apology short. “Where’s John?”

“Old John? Why, I gave up; but he’s decided to play it out. Old John and I started pretty late anyhow, and we were playing around with Julietta Voss, as it happened——”

“Yes,” his wife said, dryly, “‘as it happens’ rather often! Where are they?”

“Just out yonder.”

“Where? _We_ can’t see anybody.”

“Well, they’re there anyhow,” he returned. “They’ll be along in a minute or two.”

Mrs. Simms rose from her chair. “Suppose you go and bring them,” she said.

But before he could make any response, her sister intervened. “No! Oh, _no_!” Mildred cried in a voice of distress, and, rising, too, she caught Anne’s hand in hers. “Don’t send him! It would look as if——” She stopped, perceptibly agitated.

The surprise of the gentleman present was genuine, though not so acute as that of an inexperienced man who expects ladies never to show unreasonable and apparently causeless emotion. “Why, what’s the matter?” he said. “It doesn’t seem to me that just because two people happen to get interested in the game——”

“Never mind!” his wife said, sharply. “If you intend to take your clubs down to the locker room you’d better be doing it.”

“Very well.” He entered the clubhouse through a French window that opened upon the veranda, and his surprise was somewhat increased when his wife followed him.

“Wait,” she said, as she closed the window behind her. “Hobart Simms, I never dreamed you’d allow yourself to be put in such a position.”

“What?” he said. “What position am I in?”

“I didn’t think you were this kind of man at all,” his wife informed him with continued severity. “I always believed you were intelligent—even about women!”

“Oh, no,” he protested. “Don’t go so far as that, my dear!” He laughed as he spoke, but despite both his protest and his laughter, his looks deserved what Mrs. Simms declared to have been her previous opinion of him. Bodily, he was still a featherweight, and of that miraculous slimness which appears inconsistent with the possession of the organs necessary to sustain life; but his glance was the eagle’s.

“I did think so!” his wife exclaimed. “I used to think you were different, and that women couldn’t fool you any more than men could.”

“Anne, what woman has taken enough interest in me to fool me?”

“Nobody. She doesn’t take any interest in you; she only uses you.”

“Who is she?”

The lady gave utterance to an outcry of indignant amazement at the everlasting stupidity of a man beguiled by a woman; for, in spite of the ages during which men have been beguiled by women, the women who are not doing the beguiling never cease to marvel that it can be done. “You poor blind thing!” she cried. “Julietta Voss!”

At this he was merely amused. “You’re not feeling well, Anne,” he remarked. “What you say doesn’t sound like you at your best. I never heard anything so——”

Mrs. Simms interrupted him. “Who paid her caddy?”

“I did. I paid both hers and old John’s, but I don’t think we need——”

“What made you keep so far away from them? What made you play down the south side of the course and leave them so far over on the north? Did she ask you to?”

“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “It just happened! They were playing the same ball, against me. Naturally——”

“‘Naturally,’” she said, taking up the word sharply, “it was like that all round the course, wasn’t it?”

“What of it? I understood you to charge me with being fooled by poor little Julietta——”

“Stop calling her ‘little’,” Mrs. Simms commanded. “She’s a foot taller than you are!”

“Well, then,” he mildly remonstrated, “with all that advantage, what would she take the trouble to fool me for? If she wanted to make love to me she could do it openly, by force.”

At this, his wife’s face showed sheer despair of him. “I just said that she doesn’t take the slightest interest in you—except as a foil! This is the third time.”

“The third time what?”

“The third time you’ve been manœuvred into coming out here to play with them. Good heavens, don’t you _see_ it?”

“No,” he returned, meekly. “Tell me in words of one syllable, Anne.”

Mrs. Simms complied, and in her response there was that direct brevity not unusual with her sex in the climaxes of bitter moments. “She’s trying to get my sister’s husband away from her!”

The bewilderment of Mr. Simms was complete. “Old John?” he cried. “Old John _Tower_? Poor little Julietta Voss is trying to get old John away from Mildred? Of all the preposterous——” His laughter interrupted his enunciation. “Why, that’s the most far-fetched fancy work I ever—— But of course you don’t mean it seriously.”

“I do.”

“But it’s nonsense! Julietta’s always ready to come and be an outdoor comrade for anybody; but it’s only because she’s such a good fellow she doesn’t stop to care whether she’s with old married men like John and me, or with the boys of her own age that she’d naturally like to be with a great deal better of course.”

“She’s almost my own age; she’s over thirty,” the grim Mrs. Simms informed him. “The ‘boys of her own age’ are busy elsewhere.”

“Well, she isn’t that kind of a schemer, no matter what her age is, and if she were, why, the last person on earth she’d pick out would be steady old John Tower. He’s absolutely devoted to Mildred, and everybody knows it. And, finally, if poor Julietta is trying to break up Mildred’s hearth and home, what in the world are you so sharp with _me_ about? If it’s John, and not me that Julietta’s after——”

“Didn’t I tell you she uses you as a foil? Who could criticize her for running after another woman’s husband when his own brother-in-law is always chaperoning them? She knows there’s talk——”

“She does? Well, I don’t. You say——”

“I certainly do. Of _course_ there’s talk. There has been for some time.”

“Does Mildred share your idea?” he asked.

“She does—most unhappily!”

“Anne, do you mean to tell me that as sensible a woman as Mildred’s always seemed could actually let herself get worried about——”

“Any wife would,” Anne interrupted, severely. “Especially with a husband as odd as John Tower. So far as women are concerned he’s nothing but a grown-up child! He believes everything they tell him, and Julietta knows it. It’s because he _is_ so perfectly simple and naïve and trustful—with women—that Mildred is wretched about him.”

“What’s she said to old John about it?”

“Nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Because if she did,” Mrs. Simms explained, “it might look as if she were jealous.”

“Well, she is, isn’t she?”

“Not at all. She’s terribly hurt, and naturally she’s angry and rather disgusted to think her husband would let such a person as Julietta Voss have so much effect upon him.”

Hobart’s intelligent forehead became lined with the effort to solve the puzzle before him. “You say she’s terribly hurt and she’s angry and she’s disgusted because she thinks her husband is letting another woman carry on with him; but she’s not jealous. How would you define jealousy, Anne?”

“As nothing that a girl like Julietta Voss could make a lady feel,” Anne returned, with no little heat. “Mildred is a lady—and I’m going back to her. Be kind enough to hurry with your ablutions, if you intend any.”

He went away meekly to obey, and when he returned to the veranda he still looked meek, though there was in his glance a sly skepticism readily visible to his wife. She was sitting by the veranda railing with her sister, who was staring forth into the darkness in a manner somewhat pathetic; but, as her brother-in-law thought her imaginings absurd, his sympathies were not greatly roused. “Hasn’t that old Don Giovanni of yours finished playing it out yet, Mildred?” he inquired.

Both ladies looked round at him over their shoulders, Mildred piteously, but Anne sternly. “There’s one great trouble with an unflagging humour,” Mrs. Simms said. “It never flags.”

“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “If Mildred thinks poor old John and Julietta—— Mildred, you don’t for one minute honestly and truly——”

But Mildred made a gesture of agonized entreaty. “Please! Please!” she said in a low voice. “They’re coming!”

A peal of light laughter was heard from the darkness, and the figures of the two delaying players became visible within the outer reaches of the clubhouse lights. They were walking slowly, engaged in obviously cheerful conversation, and from the shoulders of the stalwart Tower were slung both bags containing the implements used in the game they had been playing. It was characteristic and like old John’s punctilious gallantry, his brother-in-law thought, to have seized upon both those bags the moment the caddies were dismissed. Miss Voss, almost as tall as he, was more than equal to carrying her own bag without effort.

She had the figure of a distance runner in training, lithe, hard, and active; and there was something lively, yet hard, too, in her tanned long face, which was a handsome face in spite of its length. But her eyes were what was most noticeable about her, for they were beautiful. They were brilliantly dark, and at times seemed to hold little dancing lights within them, as if they gave glimpses of secret laughter. All in all, she was a cheery companion for an outdoor afternoon, but by no manner of means a tricky witch, Mr. Hobart Simms decided, as he looked down smilingly upon her and upon that odd man, his brother-in-law and junior partner, old John Tower.

“Old John,” of an age not more than Hobart’s, was queer, Hobart thought; but his queerness did not alter the simple steadiness of character that made his intimates think and speak of him as “old John.” Moreover, his oddity lay mainly in his literal, simple truthfulness under all conditions, in his belief that others were as truthful as himself, and in an indefatigable formal politeness of manner, sometimes a little stately, that was really the expression of a kind heart.

The two came gaily up the steps, still laughing at something said out of hearing from the veranda, and Julietta gave a final fillip to their joke by reeling against her companion as they reached the top step. She steadied herself by clutching his shoulder, and seemed almost to hang upon him, for a moment or two, while she chid him. “Don’t make me laugh any more, or I’ll give you up as a partner and absolutely not play with you again to-morrow!” Then she turned briskly to Mildred. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long for your poor abducted husband, Mrs. Tower. I’m afraid he’s the kind of man who never gives up anything he sets out to do, even when he has to finish it in the dark. I suppose that’s why he’s a great man.”

“Do you think he’s a great man, Julietta?” Hobart Simms inquired in a carefully naïve manner.

“Everyone knows he is,” Julietta returned. “Of _course_ you’re a great man, John, since Hobart asks me!”

“At least, it’s most lovely of you to say you think so,” Mr. Tower responded, bowing his dark head before her gratefully. “I’m only a feeble assistant to Hobart here, who really _is_ a great man; but it’s charming of you to say I’m one, too. Really it’s most kind of you, Julietta.” He turned to his wife. “My dear, I hope you haven’t been waiting long, and I hope, if you have, you haven’t minded.”

“No, not at all,” she murmured. “But can’t we go now?”

“Just a moment. I must take these bags to the locker room and freshen up the least bit. Julietta, if you’ll give me the key to your locker I’ll have your bag put away for you.”

But Julietta laughed ruefully and shook her head. “Just leave the bag here. It takes every penny of my poor little allowance to keep me a member of the club. They charge too much for lockers. I told you the other day I didn’t have a locker.”

The kindly John struck his hands together in a sharp sound; he was shocked by his forgetfulness. “Dear me! So you did! Of course, you must allow me to make up for my omission. I’d meant to attend to that yesterday. Of _course_ you must have a locker. I’ll see to it at once and bring you the key.”

Julietta said promptly, “How lovely of you!” and he went toward the French windows; but a murmur from his wife stopped him.

“John, it’s very late. Couldn’t you postpone seeing about lockers and things like that, and let’s be starting home?”

“In just a moment, my dear,” he said in the kindest tone. “I’ll just arrange about a locker for Julietta and leave our clubs. It won’t take a moment.”

“He’s so thoughtful always,” Julietta said, looking after him gratefully as he departed. “I think I never knew a man so careful about all the little things most men don’t seem even to be conscious of.”

“Thanks, Julietta,” Mr. Simms said, cheerfully, and was immediately aware that his wife looked at him with some tensity. She had not spoken since the arrival of Julietta and her companion upon the veranda. “Thanks for the rest of us.”

“Oh, you!” Julietta said; and the dancing lights in her extraordinary eyes sparkled as she turned to him. “You’re a great man really, as dear old John just explained, and we all know what everybody says about you and Julius Cæsar—or is it Napoleon? You’ve scattered fortunes around among your friends taking them into your corporations, the way he scattered kingdoms around among his relatives. You’re so great you don’t have to bother being thoughtful about little things.”

“Julietta,” he responded, “you sound like a testimonial banquet. I hope you’ll convince my wife, though.”

“She’d be the last to need convincing,” Julietta returned. “Wouldn’t you, Mrs. Simms?”

“I might be,” Anne replied, dryly. “Hobart, I think you’d better run and tell John he’s keeping us all waiting.”

But the absent gentleman returned before his brother-in-law, moving to obey, could go in search of him; and he came with a key in his hand. “There, Julietta, if you’ll be so kind as to use this——”

“You dear man!” she cried, enthusiastically. “Now just for that I’m going to forgive you for making me laugh so hard, and we’ll finish that game to-morrow, because Hobart didn’t play it out with us to-day. Don’t you think we could all three be here a _wee_ bit earlier to-morrow—say by four o’clock?”

At this, Mildred Tower turned to her sister in an almost visible appeal for help; and Anne hurriedly endeavoured to respond with the succour besought. “So far as Mr. Simms is concerned——” she began; but Tower, unaware that she was speaking, had already accepted Julietta’s invitation.

“Delightful,” he said, bowing. “Julietta, that will be delightful. I shall be here by four o’clock promptly. Thank you for thinking of it.”

“You’ll be sure to come, too, Hobart?” Julietta asked.

Hobart’s wife began again, and her tone was emphatic. “So far as Mr. Simms is concerned——” But again she was interrupted, this time by her husband.

“Why, yes, Julietta,” he said, amiably, “I’d like very much to play it out. I’ll be here at four.”

For a moment or two there was a silence during which his consciousness that both his wife and his sister-in-law were looking at him became somewhat acute. Then, without even a murmur of leave-taking or any sound at all, Mildred Tower walked quickly to the steps, descended them, and went toward the waiting cars. Her sister, after a final look, which swept scorchingly over both gentlemen—though but one of them, her husband, was aware of its heat—turned sharply away and hurried after her.

Only the best of women are capable of doing things so embarrassing, thought the philosophical Mr. Simms; and then realized that his brother-in-law was not embarrassed at all.

“Wait a moment, my dear,” Tower called placidly after his wife. “Julietta has been kind enough to say we could drop her at her house on our way. She’s going with us.”

No response came from the hurrying Mrs. Tower.

“My dear!” her husband called. “Julietta is going to permit us——” Then, as Mildred disappeared silently into the interior of her car, he remarked with unsullied confidence, “She doesn’t hear me.”

Julietta laughed and put her hand upon his arm, looking up at him. “Do you think she wants me?”

“My dear Julietta! Of course she does. Everybody wants you. Why shouldn’t she?”

“Perhaps she thinks I live too far out of your way, and she’s in a hurry to eat her dinner,” Julietta said, wistfully. “It isn’t everyone that’s too generous to keep thinking of food when someone needs a little lift. It isn’t everybody who remembers all the little thoughtful things as you do, John, you know.”

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Mildred will be only too delighted to have you, though I do appreciate your kind opinion of me.” He looked down at her hand, which was still upon his coat sleeve, and, taking it in one of his, tucked it under his arm. “You’re charming, Julietta,” he said, beaming upon her. “Indeed you are! Perfectly charming! Shall we go down and get into the car?”

It was time for the third person present during this little interview to depart, that person decided. “_Hobart!_” his wife called from her car, and her voice was threateningly eloquent.

Hobart delayed no longer, though he was thinking with some concentration just then; and, bidding Miss Voss and his brother-in-law a quick good-night, he went by them and hurried toward the summoning voice.

Descending the steps arm-in-arm, and talking, old John and Julietta did not seem to hear the word of farewell;—Hobart was some distance away when the scrupulous Tower called after him: “Hobart, did you say, ‘Good-night’? I beg your pardon; I was listening to Julietta. Good-night, Hobart. Good-night, Anne.” Then, as Hobart got into his own car, he could hear his brother-in-law busily talking beside the other. “And now, my dear Julietta, if you’ll be so kind as to step in and sit beside Mildred, I believe you’ll be quite comfortable. There’s an extra rug, Julietta, if you——”

But Mrs. Simms had already spoken to her chauffeur, and the engine was in motion. As they drove away, she and her husband could still hear the thoughtful old John addressing himself to the subject of Julietta’s comfort, and replying to her thanks. “Not at all, my dear Julietta; it’s the greatest imaginable pleasure. And if you’ll be so kind as to allow me to place this other rug over your knees, Julietta——”

The Simms’ car passed out of hearing, and within the dark interior its owner continued to be thoughtful. He was still certain that Mildred indulged herself in mere folly when she worried about steady, simple old John. But he was not so sure of the artlessness of Julietta;—the final little interview upon the veranda had somewhat shaken his convictions in regard to Julietta.

“I suppose you’re pleased with yourself,” Mrs. Simms said, icily, after an extended silence.

“I couldn’t decline,” he returned, easily. “You didn’t give me a chance to.”

“Hobart, that’s really too much! You stopped me—interrupted me when I was in the very act of declining for you.”

“That was the reason,” he explained. “I couldn’t let you decline for me. It might have looked as though I let my wife do embarrassing things for me that I haven’t backbone enough to do for myself.”

“How diplomatic!” she said. “May I ask your _real_ reason for accepting her invitation after what I’d just told you about her? Perhaps, though, it was merely to hurt Mildred and irritate me. In that case, you made a perfect success of what you intended.”

“It wasn’t precisely that,” he laughed. “For one thing, if what you and Mildred believe has any foundation, why, old John certainly needs a chaperon; and, for another thing, I wanted the chance to see for myself if there is any reason to believe what you told me.”

“Oh, _so_?” She uttered a little cry of triumph, and laughed in the tone of her outcry. “So you’re not so sure as you were a little while ago, when you implied that my mind was wandering! So you see there _is_ something in it?”

“Only this: I admit the possibility that Julietta might want to have him attached to her as a sort of providing friend, to do little useful things for her and——”

“‘Little useful things’?” his wife said, scornfully. “Don’t you understand what type she belongs to? Only a few minutes ago you paid her caddy for her, and John rented a locker for her. Last week he got her a new set of golf clubs, Mildred told me. Julietta complained of her old ones, and he sent away for the most expensive clubs you can get in the country. When she said you put your friends into fortunes, she meant more than just to flatter you about the fortune you’ve put John Tower into; she meant you to begin to get the idea into your head that it would be pleasant some day to put _her_ into one—or her worthless old father, perhaps!”

Then, as Hobart laughed loudly at an idea apparently so far-fetched, Anne defended it. “Oh, I know it was only her impulse and not deliberate, just a chance shot of hers; but she never misses a possibility, and that possibility was somewhere in the back of her head. Of course, it isn’t you, but John that she’s playing for. She’d _rather_ have played for you; but she didn’t see any chance, of course. She discovered John’s weakness and did see the chance with him.”

“What weakness, Anne?”

“Why, the poor old thing’s childlike acceptance of women at the face value they put upon themselves, and his quaint belief that they say everything they mean and mean everything they say—just as he does himself. Mildred’s helpless because he’s such a helpless idealist; he tells her the only thing he can’t bear in a woman is when she’s so small-minded as to speak slightingly of any other woman! All Mildred can do is to suffer and not speak. I never saw anything so pitiful as what she did when you hurt her feelings so terribly.”

“When I did what?”

“When you insulted her awhile ago,” Mrs. Simms explained with calm frigidity. “She knew I’d told you what she was suffering;—I’d just told her I had. And then she had not only to listen to her husband accepting that girl’s overtures for another long tête-à-tête with him to-morrow, but to hear you promising to lend countenance to it by being used again as you’ve already been used three times. It was the same as either telling Mildred that she’s a fool, imagining the whole thing, or that you approve of Julietta’s little plans and intend to lend your aid to further them. You might as well have slapped my sister in the face.”

“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “Don’t look at it that way! I didn’t mean——”

“Didn’t you?” Anne had no compunctions whatever in punishing him to the best of her ability. “You’d already mocked her for suffering what no woman in her position could _help_ suffering. Then, in addition to what she was already trying to bear and not show, you gave her some _more_ to bear—and she couldn’t trust herself to speak; she could only run from you!”

This was indeed a new light upon what Hobart had been masculine enough to think a mere example of woman’s rudeness to woman; and in that light the speechless flight of the unfortunate Mildred now bore the colour of true pathos. Moreover, following his awakened doubts of Julietta, his wife’s view of his conduct began to be uncomfortably convincing. He feared that he was going to be remorseful.

“Of course you don’t dream I’m not fond of Mildred,” he said. “I’ve always been very——”

“You show it strangely,” Anne interrupted. She spoke with no softening of her resentment, though what she felt for her sister brought to her eyes the tears she had been withholding, and he saw them as a street light flashed through the glass of the window beside her. “Mildred’s the kind of woman people do hurt, I suppose. She’s so gentle and harmless herself, it must be a temptation! She’s always been so lovely to _you_, I suppose you couldn’t resist it.”

“Oh, look here!” he protested, and his fears were realized; he was already remorseful. “You know I wouldn’t have hurt——”

“Then why did you?”

“Well, if I did,” he said, desperately;—“and, confound it, I’m afraid maybe I did—I suppose it was because jealousy is the kind of suffering that onlookers always have the least sympathy with. I’ll beg her pardon, and, if I caused her pain, I’ll try to make it up to her.”

“How can you do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, regretfully. “I’ll just have to try to find some way.”

“That wouldn’t be very easy,” his wife said. “Could you get her husband back for her, if this girl gets him away?”

“But that _is_ nonsense,” he protested. “Julietta Voss couldn’t get that far with old John—not if she had all eternity to try in!”

This was the position he took, and he maintained it during the rest of their drive, and at intervals during the rather stately dinner for two people that was the evening custom of their big country house. After dinner, however, as he sat down to coffee with his wife in the library, he was forced to adopt another view. His sister-in-law came in suddenly and dramatically, the fur cloak she had thrown about her for a hasty drive falling to the floor as she entered the door.

Anne sprang up from her easy chair. “Mildred! What’s happened?”

For Mildred’s pallor, and her visible struggle for composure, as she stood with both hands upon the back of a chair to steady herself, left no doubt that she came because of some definite happening.

Hobart moved to withdraw. “I imagine you and Anne might like to have a talk together, Mildred. I’ll just——”

“No,” Mildred said in a strained and plaintive voice, “I’ve come for help. You’ve both got to help me somehow, because I can’t stand it. I really can’t.”

He was distressed for her. “Anything—anything in the world——”

“I _hope_ you mean it,” Mildred said, staring at him with wide and desperate eyes. “If any one can do anything to help me it’s you, Hobart, because you’ve always been able to do everything you’ve ever wanted to do. Maybe you won’t want to help me.”

“What?” he cried. “My dear girl!”

“No,” she said, pathetically;—“maybe you won’t want to. After the way you treated me before them at the club, I shouldn’t be sure you’d want to.”

“My dear sister, don’t think that,” he begged. “I see I did hurt you, and I only ask a chance to make up to you for it. What can I do?”

“Nothing!” his wife said, taking the reply into her own mouth, as she put an arm about her sister and stood facing him scornfully. “Nothing that will make up to her for what you did. That’s something you can never do, because even you can’t recall and do again what has passed.”

Troubled, admiring Anne for the proud anger of her attitude, and secretly pleased with her “even you,” he gave her a queer look in which there was a gleam of doggedness. “I’ll try, at any rate,” he said; and then, more casually, he addressed his sister-in-law: “You drove over alone, Mildred?”

“As soon as John left the house after dinner,” she said. “I kept up till he went, and then I found I couldn’t bear it any longer—I had to ask for help. After he put her into the car with me at the club, he asked me why I was so quiet, and I said I had a bad headache;—it was true enough, too. She said that was ‘too bad’ and immediately proposed that we should ‘all three’ drive into town after dinner to a cabaret vaudeville and dance and late supper!”

“She did?” Hobart asked. “Not just after you’d told them your head ached?”

“Yes. She said the way to cure a headache was to ‘be gay and forget it.’”

“What did you tell her, Mildred?”

“I said I couldn’t and that John couldn’t go either, because he had to be in his office early to-morrow morning. He said no; he didn’t need more than three or four hours’ sleep, and he would be only too glad to escort Julietta, since if I had a headache, I’d probably go to bed, and he’d have nothing to do. At dinner I asked him please not to go; _please_ to stay with me, instead. He said in his kindest way that he’d be glad to, any other night, but it was impossible this evening since he’d ‘promised Julietta,’ and couldn’t possibly break a promise. So he went—and I found I couldn’t stay in the house and think it over any longer. Hobart, you mustn’t go out there and help them pretend to play golf to-morrow.”

“Very well,” he said, gravely. “I’ll do whatever you wish. But isn’t it just possible you’d rather have me with them? If Julietta really is the designing person you believe she is——”

“If!” Mildred cried with sudden loudness. “‘If’ she is! You don’t understand, Hobart. This is what happened in the car just before we reached her house to-night;—it happens all the time. She made a gesture—she always talks with gestures—and her hand smashed against the door-frame and broke the crystal of her wrist-watch. She said she was sure the works were broken, too. It was a plain gold watch, old and not very valuable, but she made a great lamentation over it. John took it from her, put it in his pocket, and said that since it was broken in our car it was our place to restore it; she should have a new one as near like it as possible to-morrow;—it would be the ‘greatest privilege’ to obtain it for her! She _knew_ that was just what he’d do, and she broke it on purpose, of course.”

“Mildred, you really believe——”

She stopped him. “You don’t understand. It goes on all the time. And if she does this much under my very eyes, what doesn’t she get out of him when they’re alone together?”

“There might be something reassuring in that,” Hobart suggested. “If she spends her energies getting these trifles from him—because of course that’s all they are to a man in old John’s position—doesn’t that look as if her designs might be limited to——”

“No, it does not,” Mrs. Simms interrupted, promptly.

“But——”

“No,” his wife repeated. “Don’t you see that the very fact of her wanting the trifles would make her want something a great deal more important, and that’s to be in a position where she wouldn’t have to work for them?”

“Well, then,” her husband returned;—“if she expects to reach that position by supplanting Mildred, she has a ridiculous ambition!”

“Is it?” Mildred asked, unhappily. “If John were any other kind of man, it might be ridiculous.” Tears came into her eyes that had been dry until now; but she struggled with herself and kept more from coming. “Isn’t it ironical?” she said. “The very goodness of such a man as John, his simple kindness, his idealizing—the very things I’ve cared for most in him—that they should be his weakness and just what leaves him open to the easy cajoling of a crude trespasser like Julietta Voss! Don’t you understand, Hobart? I know you didn’t understand this afternoon, but don’t you now? You thought I was jealous of him, I know. Perhaps I am; perhaps I do want to keep him for myself; but I’m his wife; why shouldn’t I? And I know I’m better for him than she’d be. Oh, don’t you understand? I want to _protect_ him!”

Hobart came to her and took her hand. “Mildred, old John hasn’t the remotest idea you’re suffering like this. You’ve got to tell him about it.”

“But I _can’t_,” she cried. “I can’t let him think I’m just a jealous woman, and what else would he think of me if I told him the truth about her? That’s why I don’t want you to go out there with them to-morrow, Hobart.”

“Of course I won’t, since you ask it,” he said, mystified. “Yet I don’t see——”

“You don’t?” his wife asked, sharply; and, in obvious pity for a poor understanding, characteristically manlike, she explained what she had instantly divined—her unhappy sister’s reason for coming to ask him to help her. “Julietta counts on your being with them as the answer to the talk about them. She intends to have a defence against the talk—an answer that will help to keep people on her side—and if you break your engagement without any explanation she’ll wonder what it means, and if we haven’t _asked_ you to do it; and she’ll get John to find out. He’ll ask you why you didn’t come. Then you can tell him you stayed away because you’re troubled about what Mildred may think. It’s all you need say, and he’ll speak to Mildred about it. That will give her a _chance_ to talk to him.”

“Is it what you want, Mildred?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s the only thing I can think of. It gives me a chance to talk to him, that’s all. It may make him despise me, anyhow. I don’t know what he’ll say, but I’ve got to do it;—I can’t go on any longer not saying _anything_! Perhaps”—her breath caught in her throat, and for a moment she could not speak—“perhaps he’ll ask me for a divorce. Well, if he does, I’ll give it to him!”

“No, no!” her sister cried. “You said you wanted to protect him!”

“If he doesn’t love me any more, I _couldn’t_,” Mildred sobbed, for her struggle to control herself was lost now, and her weeping became convulsive. “Don’t you see I couldn’t? You can’t protect anybody that’s tired of you. If he’s tired of you, how can you protect him against someone he’s in love with?”

“My dear sister!” Hobart begged her, deeply moved. “Don’t think it. Old John isn’t in love with Julietta Voss any more than I am!”

“How do I _know_?” she sobbed. “He _acts_ as if he is. What other way is there to tell? How do I know?” And, clinging to his hand, she sank down into the chair beside which she had been standing. “Oh, Hobart, you must help me; you must try your best to help me!”

“Indeed I will,” he promised, with all the earnestness that was in him. “I’ll do anything in the world, Mildred—absolutely anything!”

He meant it indeed; but over the bowed form of the unhappy lady who clung to his hand, entreating him, he looked into the denouncing and skeptical eyes of his wife. She needed no words, nor anything except those implacable eyes of hers, to tell him that his own recent behaviour was in great part responsible for the misery before them, and that he lacked the power to make up to Mildred for what he had done.

He adored his wife, and he took that look of hers as a challenge.