Floyd Grandon's Honor

by Amanda M. Douglas

Violet cannot sleep. A strange impulse haunts her, a desire to escape from the chain, to fly to the bounds of the earth, to bury herself out of sight, to give up, worsted and discomfited, for there can be no fight. There is no enemy to attack. It is kindest, tenderest friend who has offered her a stone for bread, when she did not know the difference. She recalls her old talks with Denise concerning a wife's duty and obedience and respect. Ah, how could she have been so ignorant, or having been blind, why should she see now? That old life was satisfactory! She never dreamed of anything beyond. But she has seen the fine gold of love offered upon the altar. John Latimer is no better, finer, or nobler man than Floyd Grandon, and yet he loves his wife with so tender a passion that Violet's life looks like prison and starvation beside it. If she dared go to Floyd Grandon and ask for a little love! Did he give it all to that regal woman long ago, and does the ghost of the strangled passion stand between?

She tosses wearily, and is not much refreshed when morning dawns. Fortunately it is a busy day. Mrs. Dayre, who is a rather youngish widow of ample means, and who spent her early days at Westbrook, a sort of elder contemporary of the Grandons and Miss Stanwood, is to come with her young and pretty daughter, and take her mother with them to the West. Eugene goes to the station, and finds Miss Bertie Dayre a very stylish young woman, with an abundance of blond hair, creamy skin, white teeth, and a dazzling smile. She has been a year in society, the kind that has made an old campaigner of her already. She is not exactly fast, but she dallies on the seductive verge and picks out the daintiest bits of slang. She is seventeen, but looks mature as twenty; her mother is thirty-six, and could discount the six years easily.

Violet has made friends with Mrs. Wilbur, who finds her old-fashioned simplicity charming. She helps to receive the new guests, not as much startled by Miss Dayre as she would have been six months ago. The world is so different outside of convent walls that it seems sometimes as if she were in a play, acting a part.

In the midst of this Floyd Grandon arrives. Cecil captures him in wildest delight. Violet is glad to meet him first before all these people; alas for love when it longs for no secrecy! She colors and a sweet light glows in her face, she cannot unlearn her lesson all at once. Then she is quiet, lady-like, composed. Floyd watches her with a curious sensation. It is a new air of being mistress, of having a responsibility.

There certainly is a very gay week at Grandon Park. Bertie Dayre stirs people into exciting life. She is vivacious, exuberant, has wonderful vitality, and is never still a moment. Eugene has no need to devote himself to Miss Brade, he cannot even attend to Miss Bertie's pressing needs, and Floyd is called in to fill empty spaces. All men seem created with a manifest purpose of adding to her steady enjoyment.

"I think you were very short-sighted to marry so young," says Miss Dayre, calmly, to Violet, as they are driving out one morning. "What kind of a life are you going to have? It seems almost as if your greatest duty was to be a sort of nursery governess to the child, who is a marvel of beauty. How extremely fond her father is of her! Now I should be jealous."

She utters this with a calm assumption of authority bordering on experience. Indeed, Bertie Dayre impresses you with the certainty that she does know a great deal, the outcome of her confident belief in her own shrewd, far-sighted eyes.

"But I love Cecil very much," returns Violet, so earnestly that Bertie stares.

"There are some women to whom children are more than the husband," announces this wise young woman. "I should want to have the highest regard for my husband. In fact, I mean never to marry until I can find a soul the exact counterpart of mine. Marriages are too hurried,—too many minor considerations are taken into account, home, money, position, protection, and all that,—but I suppose every girl cannot order her own life. I shall be able to."

Violet smiles dreamily, yet there is infinite sadness in it. If she could have ordered her life, she would have married Floyd Grandon and made the same mistake fate has made for her. Even now she would rather be the object of his kindly, indifferent tenderness than the wife of any other. Eugene's brilliance and spirited devotion do not touch her in any depth of sentiment, and yet he is so kind, so thoughtful for her, she sees it in so many ways.