“So you paid it again, resolving to fight the affair out with Neil, when he came home. You really accepted the debt, and made it your own, and be sure that Neil will find out a way to make you responsible for its payment in law. In point of truth and honor, and every holy affection, it was Neil’s obligation, and every good man and woman would cry shame on his shirking it. Roberta, you have made the supreme mistake! You have allied yourself with a mean, dishonorable caitiff—a creature in whose character baseness and wickedness meet; and who has no natural affections. As I have told you before, and often, Neil Ruleson has one idea—money. All the comforts and refinements of this home would be instantly abandoned, if he had them to pay for. He has a miserly nature, and only his love of himself prevents him from living on a crust, or a few potato parings.”
“Oh, Reginald, you go too far.”
“I do not. When a man can grudge his good, loving mother on her death-bed anything, or all that he 272 has, he is no longer fit for human companionship. He should go to a cave, or a garret, and live alone. What are you going to do? My dear, dear sister, what are you going to do?”
“What you advise, Reginald. For this reason I sent for you.”
“Then listen. I knew a crisis of some kind must soon come between you and that—creature, and this is what I say—you must leave him. Every day you stay with him insults your humanity, and your womanhood. He says he will be four or five days away, we will have plenty of time for my plan. Before noon I will have here wagons and men in sufficient number to empty this house into Menzie’s granite storage in two days. Send the silver to the bank. I will put it in a cab, and take it myself. Pack things you value highly in one trunk, which can be specially insured. Our pictures we will place in the Ludin Picture Gallery. We can clear the house in three days, and on the morning of the fourth day, young Bruce Kinlock will move into it. If Neil can face Kinlock, it will be the worse for him, for Kinlock’s temper blazes if he but hear Neil’s name, and his hand goes to his side, for the dirk with which his fathers always answered an enemy.”
“Then, Reginald, when I have turned myself out of house and home, what follows?”
“We will take a passage to New Orleans.”
“New Orleans! Why there? Such an out-of-the-way place.”
“Exactly. That creature will argue thus—they have gone to some place on the Continent—very likely France. And he will probably try to make you a deal of trouble. I have never named New Orleans to anyone. Even our friends will never suspect our destination, for we shall go first to France, and take a steamer from some French port, for New Orleans. When we arrive there, we have a new world before us, and can please ourselves where we go, and where we stay. Now, Roberta, decide at once. We have time, but none too much, and I will work night and day to get you out of the power of such a husband.”