[XXXIII]
Mrs. Walbrough was one of those women who are happiest when trouble impends or is at hand. She had fallen in love with Clancy almost at sight; but her affection had been rendered durable and lasting as soon as she had discovered that Clancy was in danger. Wives who are not mothers but who have always craved children furnish the majority of this kind of woman.
And now, when Clancy's story had been told to her, and she had exclaimed, and colored in rage and grown white with apprehension, and after she had tucked Clancy securely in bed, so that there was no more to be done for her protégée, the thoughts of the motherly woman turned to Sophie Carey.
"Would you be afraid," she asked, "if I went over to the Carey place? Poor thing! I never forgave her for marrying Don Carey; I don't think I've been kind enough to her."
The remark caused Clancy to remember that not, during the entire day, had Mrs. Walbrough mentioned the fact that the Careys were such near neighbors. Of course, that might be accounted for by the fact that Mrs. Walbrough had no idea that Sophie and her husband were at their country place. But she realized that Mrs. Walbrough imagined that her attitude toward Sophie had not been as generous as she now wished. So, even if she had feared being left alone in the house, she would have denied it. Mrs. Walbrough, Clancy readily understood, was like all whose natural affections have not sufficient outlet. They wonder if "So-and-So" will misinterpret their remarks, if "Such-and-Such" has been offended.
"I don't believe," she said, "that you've ever been anything but sweet and good to every one. But, of course, I don't mind your going. 'Afraid?'" She laughed heartily at the idea.
And so, with many motherly injunctions about the hot-water bottle at her feet and the heavy woolen blankets drawn up about her shoulders, Mrs. Walbrough departed.
Clancy reached for the electric button at the head of her bed. She turned off the lights. She was not sleepy, yet she felt that she could think better in the dark. But it was a long time before her mental processes were coherent. She was more tired than she knew. To-day's exertions upon the snow-covered hill would ordinarily have been no tax at all upon her youthful strength. But excitement saps vitality. And when one combines too much exercise with too much mental strain, one becomes bewildered.
So, as she lay there, her thoughts were chaotic, nightmarish. Like one in an audience, she seemed to detach herself, not merely from her body but from her brain. She found amusement in her own mental wanderings. For from some incident of childhood her mind leaped to the studio-dance at Mrs. Carey's city house. From there it went to her motion-picture ambitions, thence to Vandervent's flowers with their somewhat illegible card. She thought of Randall's conveyance of her to the Napoli on that night, so shortly ago, when she had mistaken him for a taxi-man. She thought of her entrance into Vandervent's office, with confession trembling on her lips.