ce and distorted figure. Then he said:
"So this is the way you come back."
"He drove me out," she said dully. "He sent me here. He knew I had no
place else to go. He knew you wouldn't want me. It's revenge, I suppose.
I'm so tired, father."
Yes, it was revenge, surely. To send back to him this soiled and broken
woman, bearing the mark he had put upon her--that was deviltry, thought
out and shrewdly executed. During the next hour Anthony Cardew suffered,
and made Elinor suffer, too. But at the end of that time he found
himself confronting a curious situation. Elinor, ashamed, humbled, was
not contrite. It began to dawn on Anthony that Jim Doyle's revenge was
not finished. For--Elinor loved the man.
She both hated him and loved him. And that leering Irish devil knew it.
He sent for Grace, finally, and Elinor was established in the house.
Grace and little Lily's governess had themselves bathed her and put
her to bed, and Mademoiselle had smuggled out of the house the garments
Elinor had worn into it. Grace had gone in the motor--one of the first
in the city--and had sent back all sorts of lovely garments for Elinor
to wear, and quantities of fine materials to be made into tiny garments.
Grace was a practical woman, and she disliked the brooding look in
Elinor's eyes.
"Do you know," she said to Howard that night, "I believe she is quite
mad about him still."
"He ought to be drawn and quartered," said Howard, savagely.
Anthony Cardew gave Elinor sanctuary, but he refused to see her again.
Except once.
"Then, if it is a boy, you want me to leave him with you?" she asked,
bending over her sewing.
"Leave him with me! Do you mean that you intend to go back to that
blackguard?"
"He is my husband. He isn't always cruel."
"Good God!" shouted Anthony. "How did I ever happen to have such a
craven creature for a daughter?"
"Anyhow," said Elinor, "it will be his child, father."
"When he turned you out, like any drab of the streets!" bellowed old
Anthony. "He never cared for you. He married you to revenge himself on
me. He sent you back here for the same reason. He'll take your child,
and break its spirit and ruin its body, for the same reason. The man's a
maniac."
But again, as on the night she came, he found himself helpless against
Elinor's quiet impassivity. He knew that, let Jim Doyle so much as raise
a beckoning finger, and she would go to him. He did not realize that
Elinor had inherited from he
|