s
touch hers, except when she extended it in greeting. He was to accompany
his father and sister to Europe in a week, so what harm was there: He
would forget all about it. He knew now she was married. He was presented
to Nita, but had hardly a word and never a look for her when Margaret was
near. He was dumb and miserable all the day they drove in the park and
later dined at Delmonico's with Colonel Frost. He was sick, even when
mounted on his favorite English thoroughbred and scampering about the
bridle path for peeps at the drives, when she was at the park again with
that gray-haired reprobate, that money shark, Cashton--a Wall Street
broker black-balled at every decent club in New York. Why should she go
with him? He had been most kind, she said, in the advice and aid he had
given her in the investment of her little fortune. She told the lie with
downcast eyes and cheeks that burned, for most of that little fortune was
already frittered away, and Cashton's reports seemed to require many
personal visits that had set tongues wagging at the hotel, so much
frequented of the Army, where she had taken a room until Nita should have
been graduated and they could go to the seashore. She had promised to be
at home to her boy adorer that very evening and to go with him to Daly's,
and he had secured the seats four days ahead. Poor "Gov" had trotted
swiftly home from the park, striving to comfort himself over his bath and
irreproachable evening clothes, that _there_, with her by his side, the
wild jealousy of the day would vanish. Sharply on time he had sent up his
card and listened, incredulous, to the reply: "Mrs. Garrison has not yet
returned." He would wait, he said, and did wait, biting his nails,
treading the floor, fuming in doubt and despair until nearly ten, when a
carriage dashed up to the ladies' entrance and that vile Cashton handed
her out, escorted her in and vanished. She came hurrying to her boy lover
with both little hands outstretched, with a face deeply flushed and words
of pleading and distress rushing from her lips. "Indeed I could not help
it, Gov," she cried. "I told him of my engagement and said we must not go
so far, but away at the north end something happened, I don't know what,
a wheel was bent and the harness wrenched by too short a turn on a stone
post at a corner. Something had to be repaired. They said it wouldn't
take ten minutes, and he led me out and up to the piazza of that big
hotel--you know, w