But Maurice was to hand too! He had in fact been right at hand, with a plan for a useless, broken life at a moment when there seemed to be nothing left to do but die. And there was something almost like a tie between us in the knowledge that we shared of Anthony’s fate; and in the fact that he was the first to go forth to seek news for me. True I could not thank him for such news as he brought; but somehow he seemed almost sanctified to me in being the bearer of that little fateful blue stone I wore against my heart; the last thing Anthony had worn: the last tangible trace of him on earth!
Oh, yes, there were reasons, bitter cruel reasons why I should repay the love and service of Maurice Stair, inasmuch as a loveless wife and the empty shell of a heart could repay him. It seemed a poor bargain for a man of thirty with ambitions for a great career, and all the world before him, to make and be content with; but he never ceased to assure me of his content, so the least I could do was to refrain from the gracelessness of reminding him of it. And indeed I meant to do my part for his career, at least. When his uncle had once launched him in the Consular service well I knew that he would find no wife more able for that kind of life than I who had been practically trained to society: with my upbringing and knowledge of the world and its ways, with a heart empty of any thing but ambition for my husband I could go far and I meant to—in return for being wrenched from the claw of Africa!
Chapter Seventeen.
What a Jeweller Made.
“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”
So Maurice Alexander Stair and I were married.
After the ceremony we drove back to Kentucky Hills, and shared with a few friends the pretty breakfast Judy had arranged for us.
Later they all rode away, and Maurice with them, leaving me to pack for our exeunt that afternoon to a little place called Water-lily Farm. It was the home of a fellow N.C. of Maurice’s; he had just prepared it for his wife who was coming out from home, but with the ready good-fellowship so common in Africa had offered it to Maurice for our honeymoon; and we, both anxious that the world should guess nothing of our strange bargain, had accepted it to stay in and spend the first few days of our married life.