“They are going,” she cried, “and we are left!”
She turned to him in agitation. He stood, splendid in his arrogant assurance, in his unrelenting dominance, his fine presence befitting the great hall which he would so amply grace in its restored magnificence. It was well for him that he was so handsome. Such a man, less graciously endowed, would have been intolerable in his arrogance, his selfishness, his brutality.
He showed no interest in the departure at the landing; he knew, by the sound, that the steamboat was now well out in midstream, and he secretly congratulated himself upon the termination of this ill-starred revival of old associations with the Ducies. Never again should they cross his wife’s path. Never again should he submit to the humiliation imposed upon him by the revival of old memories which had incited in her this strange restiveness to his supreme control. She had been wont to hug her chains—not that he thus phrased the gentle constraints he had imposed, rather wifely duty, conjugal love, admiration, trust.
The steamboat was gone at length, and his wife, standing in the hall and looking through the wide doorless portal, had seen the last of the passengers. Looking with a strange expression on her strained face which he could not understand,—what series of mysteries had her demeanor set him to interpret during these few hours, she who used to be so pellucidly transparent! Looking with frowning brow and questioning intent eyes, then with a suddenly clearing expression and a vindictive glance like triumph, she turned away with an air of bridling dignity, as if the steamer and its passengers had no concern for her, and, the next moment, Randal Ducie ascended the steps and entered the hall.
CHAPTER XIII
Edward Floyd-Rosney in some sort habitually confused cause and effect. In his normal entourage he mistook the swift potencies of his wealth, waiting on his will, like a conjurer’s magic, for an individual endowment of ability. He had great faith in his management. In every group of business men with whom his affairs brought him in contact his financial weight gave him a predominance and an influence which flattered his vanity, and which he interpreted as personal tribute, and yet he did not disassociate in his mind his identity from his income. His wealth was an integral part of him, one of the many great values attached to his personality—he felt that he was wise and witty, capable and coercive. He addressed himself to the manipulation of a difficult situation with a certainty of success that gave a momentum to the force with which his money carried all before him. So rarely had he been placed on a level with other men, in a position in which wealth and influence were inoperative, that he had had scant opportunities to appraise his own mental processes—his judgment, his initiative, his powers of ratiocination.
He did not feel like a fool when Randal Ducie walked deliberately into the hall of his fathers, staring in responsive surprise to see the Floyd-Rosneys still lingering there. That admission was impossible to Floyd-Rosney’s temperament. He felt as if contemplating some revulsion of nature. He had seen this man among the crowd, boarding the steamer, and lo, here he was again, on dry land and the boat now miles distant.
He stood stultified, all his plans for the avoidance of Ducie strangely dislocated and set at naught by the unexpected falling out of events.
He was not calculated to bear tamely any crossing of his will, and the blood began to throb heavily in his temples with the realization that his wife had understood his clumsy maneuver, of which she was the subject, and witnessed its ludicrous discomfiture. His pride would not suffer him to glance toward her, where she sat perched up on the grand staircase, in the attitude of a coquettish girl. He curtly addressed Ducie:
“Thought you were gone!”