He was thinking the trifling sum was yet sufficient to work mischief if she were under some temporary aberration.
“I want to go to my aunt’s place in the uplands of Mississippi—my old home! Oh, how I wish I had never left it!”
She threw herself back in the chair and pressed her handkerchief to her streaming eyes. “Mr. Ducie, I have fled from my husband’s house. He has taken my child from me—spirited him away—and I don’t know where he is, nor how he will be cared for. He is only three years old—oh, just a little thing!”
“Mrs. Floyd-Rosney, you must control your voice,” said Ducie, embarrassed and reluctant. “I hate to say it—but you will bring the whole house about us.”
Once launched on a recital of her woes she had acquired a capacity to arrange her ideas, and was keenly noting the effect of her words. There was no alacrity to produce the money she had requested as a loan, corresponding to the prompt acquiescence of Adrian Ducie a moment or so ago. She marveled in humble anxiety, not knowing that the two men doubted her mental responsibility, and feared to trust her with money.
Her griefs, once released, strained for expression, and she went on in a meek, muffled tone that brought the tears to the old Colonel’s pitying eyes—his heart had grown very soft with advancing years—but Adrian Ducie held himself well in hand and regarded her with critical dispassionateness.
“My husband desires, for some reason which he does not explain, but which I suspect, to get me out of the country.”
Once more Colonel Kenwynton and Ducie exchanged a covert glance of comment.
“He has arranged an extensive European and Oriental tour for me—without my child—leaving my child for a year at least. Why, Colonel Kenwynton, tell me what would all the glories of foreign capitals and all the associations of Palestine count for with me when the one little face that I care to see is far away, and the one little voice I cannot hear!”
“Oh, my dear madam”—the Colonel had a frog in his throat—“surely Mr. Floyd-Rosney would not insist. You must be mistaken!”