'Bah! Trenton Warren is the last man in the world to whom such an insinuation could apply. He thinks of business and nothing else, and is so singularly apathetic about Mrs. Griswold's grace, beauty, and good qualities, as really to rile and vex her husband, who wishes all the world to be as cognisant of them as he is himself.'
'What a large-hearted man!' said Dillon, with a cynical smile. 'And so I am entirely wrong about Mr. Trenton Warren, am I?' he added to himself, as Vanderlip moved off to speak to some ladies. 'And he has no admiration for Mrs. Griswold? Well, I am not usually wrong in such matters, and as I have nothing else to do until Vanderlip is ready to go, I may as well amuse myself by watching what is going on around me.'
Let us take advantage of this opportunity to sketch a little of the previous history, and to describe the relations then existing between Helen and Alston Griswold and Trenton Warren, three personages who are to play most important parts in our drama. And first let us see that Redmond Dillon, clever by nature and sharpened by experience, was not very far wrong in his judgment of the actual position of affairs. All that he had heard from Vanderlip about Trenton Warren was correct. The one annoyance of Alston Griswold's life (out of his business career, which, as is usually the case, was full of annoyances) was, that his friend, could never be prevailed upon to speak, as her husband thought, sufficiently warmly of Helen.
And yet if all had only been known, Warren's appreciation of the woman at whom he was then gazing, with all his soul glowing in his eyes, was really greater than that bestowed upon her by her husband. Alston Griswold thought his wife the prettiest, dearest little creature in the world--one on whom it was impossible to bestow too great an amount of petting and affection, one whom it would have been impossible for him to deceive or betray--far beyond any other woman in the world, but still a woman, and as such inferior to man; something to be caressed and petted and spoiled, a pretty plaything, a charming solace for one's leisure hours, but nothing more. Alston Griswold would have scouted the idea of talking over any affairs of vital importance with his wife, of making her the confidante of his business schemes, of asking her advice in regard to any detail of the great struggles in which he was constantly engaged; she would not have understood them, he thought, and why should she be bored with them?
Trenton Warren knows her better than this. His sense is far finer, his insight far keener, than his friend's, and while he has apparently stood aloof from any attempt at intimate acquaintance with Helen, and has been sufficiently sparing of her praises in her husband's ears, he has brought all his sense and keenness to bear upon the dissection of her character, and has arrived at a far different estimate of her mental power. Constant secret study of her tells him that, if she is not exactly clever, she has an immense fund of common sense, determination, and patience--tells him also another thing, the thought of which sends the blood into his pale cheeks, and causes his heart to throb with exultation. Helen Griswold, this pattern wife, so decorous, so much respected, so universally looked up to, holds her husband in highest esteem, in most affectionate appreciation, but of love for him.--of love, be it understood, in the sense of passion--she has, according to Warren's idea, not one whit. Such love the placid easy-going absorbed man of business--so much her elder too, with his petting parental way--was not one to kindle; and yet such love, if Warren were any judge, was as necessary to her as air to light or heat to flame. He had watched her carefully, and he read the necessity for it in the occasional wearied expression which came across the lustrous depths of her dark eyes, in a certain unsatisfied restlessness which from time to time she betrayed; he imagined he had discovered her craving for love of a distinct kind from that which her husband bestowed on her, and in this discovery he found hopes for his own future success.
For this man, outwardly cold, self-possessed, and reticent, so far as Helen Griswold was concerned, was the slave of a passion, violent, unreasonable, unconquerable. He struggled against it for a time, fearing the probable trouble, the danger it would cause him; and when finally he found resistance to it impossible he determined that by her alone should its existence be known. All his apparent insensibility to Helen's charms, all his studied depreciation of Griswold's enthusiasm about his wife, were caused by what he felt to be the imperative necessity of keeping his passion hidden until the time should arrive for declaring it to its object, and to her alone.
And Helen--what was the state of her feelings towards Trenton Warren? She could scarcely have told you if you had asked her. But in her secret self she knew that she regarded him with dislike, almost approaching to loathing, without being able to account to herself for the detestation he inspired. She was afraid of him without any definite cause for her fear, suspicious without being able to explain to herself the reason for her suspicions. That he has any tender feeling, any of the animal passion which men of his stamp dignify by the name of love, she does not dream for a moment. Had such an idea crossed her mind, her dislike of him would have been intensified. It was on her husband's account that she first conceived this distrust of Warren, who, she felt certain, was exercising an evil influence, over Griswold, and worming himself for a bad purpose into her husband's confidence.
Helen had this conviction so strongly that it would have been impossible to dispossess her mind of it; and yet, feeling as she did the difficulty of reasoning it out to herself, she saw clearly the utter impossibility of making her husband understand it. Even if she could have explained herself, she doubted very much whether she could have carried conviction to Alston's mind; for Helen's keen and accurate judgment had long since taught her to comprehend the exact manner in which her husband appreciated her, and to know that, though most kind and loving and admiring, he regarded her merely as a sweet solace for his hours of relaxation, and would have certainly misunderstood anything she might have said to him in regard to Trenton Warren, and imputed it to a womanish jealousy of his male friends.
What was it that filled Helen's mind with these reflections at a time when she ought to have been thinking either of the gay scene around her, or of the loneliness which would fall upon her on the morrow, when her husband should be gone? What was it that set her speculating upon the motives which could possibly prompt Trenton Warren to be so assiduous in his attention to her husband, so desirous to conciliate him and to secure his intimacy and confidence? What was it? She was answered at once, as she raised her eyes and saw the man who had occupied her thoughts standing immediately opposite, his gaze bent full upon her!
Was Trenton Warren taken off his guard? Had the sight of the woman for whom he had entertained so fierce a passion--sitting there radiant in youth and beauty, her full evening toilette contrasting somewhat strangely with her air of preoccupation, almost of sadness--caused him for an instant to drop the mask? Or did he think the time had come when the revelation of that passion might in safety be made? Certainly, there was an expression in his eyes such as Helen had never seen there before--an expression which caused her to drop her own instantly in amazement and indignation.