“Never!” he answered. “There could not be a greater lie than to say you have done it. The responsibility is with the wretched and vicious boy who brought the catastrophe upon himself. But don’t you see that you’ve got to keep out of it, that we’ve got to take you out of it?”
“You can’t! I’m part of it; better or worse, it’s as much mine as his.”
“No, no!” cried Miss Elizabeth. “YOU mustn’t tell us THAT!” Still weeping, she sprang up and threw her arms about her brother. “It’s too horrible of you—”
“It is what I must tell you,” Mrs. Harman said. “My separation from my husband is over. I shall be with him now for—”
“I won’t listen to you!” Miss Elizabeth lifted her wet face from George’s shoulder, and there was a note of deep anger in her voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about; you haven’t the faintest idea of what a hideous situation that creature has made for himself. Don’t you know that that awful woman was right, and there are laws in France? When she finds she can’t get out of him all she wants, do you think she’s going to let him off? I suppose she struck you as being quite the sort who’d prove nobly magnanimous! Are you so blind you don’t see exactly what’s going to happen? She’ll ask twice as much now as she did before; and the moment it’s clear that she isn’t going to get it, she’ll call in an agent of police. She’ll get her money in a separate suit and send him to prison to do it. The case against him is positive; there isn’t a shadow of hope for him. You talk of being with him; don’t you see how preposterous that is? Do you imagine they encourage family housekeeping in French prisons?”
“Oh, come, this won’t do!” The speaker was Cresson Ingle, who stepped forward, to my surprise; for he had been hovering in the background wearing an expression of thorough discomfort.
“You’re going much too far,” he said, touching his betrothed upon the arm. “My dear Elizabeth, there is no use exaggerating; the case is unpleasant enough just as it is.”
“In what have I exaggerated?” she demanded.
“Why, I KNEW Larrabee Harman,” he returned. “I knew him fairly well. I went as far as Honolulu with him, when he and some of his heelers started round the world; and I remember that papers were served on him in San Francisco. Mrs. Harman had made her application; it was just before he sailed. About a year and a half or two years later I met him again, in Paris. He was in pretty bad shape; seemed hypnotised by this Mariana and afraid as death of her; she could go into a tantrum that would frighten him into anything. It was a joke—down along the line of the all-night dancers and cafes—that she was going to marry him; and some one told me afterward that she claimed to have brought it about. I suppose it’s true; but there is no question of his having married her in good faith. He believed that the divorce had been granted; he’d offered no opposition to it whatever. He was travelling continually, and I don’t think he knew much of what was going on, even right around him, most of the time. He began with cognac and absinthe in the morning, you know. For myself, I always supposed the suit had been carried through; so did people generally, I think. He’ll probably have to stand trial, and of course he’s technically guilty, but I don’t believe he’d be convicted—though I must say it would have been a most devilish good thing for him if he could have been got out of France before la Mursiana heard the truth. Then he could have made terms with her safely at a distance—she’d have been powerless to injure him and would have precious soon come to time and been glad to take whatever he’d give her. NOW, I suppose, that’s impossible, and they’ll arrest him if he tries to budge. But this talk of prison and all that is nonsense, my dear Elizabeth!”
“You admit there is a chance of it!” she retorted.