ind had scarcely heeded Brent's words or Mrs.
Chandos'. She had come down prepared for any attitude but the one in
which she found him; for anger, reproaches, arraignments. Nay, she
was surprised to find now that she had actually hoped for these. She
deserved to be scolded: it was her right. If he had been all of a man,
he would have called her to account. There must be--there was something
lacking in his character. And it came to her suddenly, with all the
shock of a great contrast, with what different eyes she had looked upon
him five years before at Silverdale.
He went into the house and started to enter the drawing-room, still in
disorder and reeking with smoke.
"No, not in there!" she cried sharply.
He turned to her puzzled. Her breath was coming and going quickly. She
crossed the hall and turned on the light in the little parlour there,
and he followed her.
"Don't you feel well?" he asked.
"Howard," she said, "weren't you worried?"
"Worried? No, why should I have been? Lula Chandos and May Barclay had
seen you in the automobile in town, and I knew you were high and dry
somewhere."
"High and dry," she repeated.
"What?"
"Nothing. They said I had run off with Mr. Brent, didn't they?"
He laughed.
"Yes, there was some joking to that effect."
"You didn't take it seriously?"
"No--why should I?"
She was appalled by his lack of knowledge of her. All these years she
had lived with him, and he had not grasped even the elements of
her nature. And this was marriage! Trixton Brent--short as their
acquaintance had been--had some conception of her character and
possibilities her husband none. Where was she to begin? How was she to
tell him the episode in the automobile in order that he might perceive
something of its sinister significance?
Where was she to go to be saved from herself, if not to him?
"I might have run away with him, if I had loved him," she said after a
pause. "Would you have cared?"
"You bet your life," said Howard, and put his arm around her.
She looked up into his face. So intent had she been on what she
had meant to tell him that she did not until now perceive he was
preoccupied, and only half listening to what she was saying.
"You bet your life," he said, patting her shoulder. "What would I have
done, all alone, in the new house?"
"In the new house?" she cried. "Oh, Howard--you haven't taken it!"
"I haven't signed the lease," he replied importantly, smiling dow
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