He made no response, and Madge heard his step pass into his wife's room. A moment later Miss Wildmere also departed, and her voice was soon heard on the piazza. The conversation had been carried on in a comparatively low tone, and some words had been lost, but those heard made the sense given above. Circumstances had favored Madge. The open window at which she was sitting was near the next window in Miss Wildmere's room, and within two or three feet there was the customary thin-panelled door which enables the proprietor to throw rooms together, as required, for the accommodation of families. Therefore, without moving or volition on her part information vital to her relatives had been brought to her knowledge. She was perfectly overwhelmed at first, and sat as if stunned, her cheeks scarlet with shame for the act of listening, even while she felt that for the sake of the innocent and unsuspecting, to whom she owed loyalty and love, it was right. Soon, however, came the impulse to seek the refuge of her own room and think of what must be done. She stepped lightly to the outer door; there was no sound in the corridor, and with all the composure she could assume she passed quietly out and gained her own apartment unobserved.
CHAPTER XXX
THE STRONG MAN UNMANNED
Madge locked her doors, bathed her hot face, then paced her room in great agitation, feeling that not only her own happiness was in peril, but Graydon's also. Her mental distress was greatly enhanced by a feeling that in order to save her relatives she herself had been guilty of what to her sensitive nature appeared almost like a crime. "Was it right?" she asked herself again and again, and at last reached the conclusion that the fealty she owed to her relatives and to the man she loved justified her course—that she should shield them even at such cost to herself. "It was not curiosity that kept me passive," she thought, "but the hope, the chance to save Henry from financial ruin and Graydon from far worse disaster." It would indeed be "horrible" for any true man to marry such a girl; and to permit the man she loved to make such a fatal blunder was simply monstrous. Yet how could she prevent it without doing violence to every maidenly principle of her nature?
Should she tell her sister? This impulse passed almost instantly. Mary had not the tact, nerve, or reticence to meet such an emergency. It seemed, however, that if something was not done almost immediately this callous, selfish girl would cause lifelong wretchedness to Graydon as certainly as to Madge herself. Such a nature could not long maintain its disguise, and probably would not be at pains to do so after marriage. The self-sacrifice that she had led Graydon to believe in was all deceit. It was self with her, first and last; it would be self always. Madge knew Graydon well enough to be sure that to him, when his illusions were dissipated, the marriage vow would become a chain growing heavier with time.
This absolutely certain phase of the danger was so terrible that at first it almost completely dominated her thoughts. "Oh," she moaned, "I could see him marry a woman who would make him happy, and yet survive, but this would be worse than death!"
As she became more calm and could think connectedly, her mind reverted to what had been said about Henry's financial peril; and while she was inclined to take the same view as Miss Wildmere, she soon began to see that her brother-in-law should be informed of all references to him. Then the impression grew upon her that it would be wisest to tell him all, and let him save his brother, if possible, from a fate infinitely worse than lifelong poverty. Would this involve the disclosure to Mr. Muir of her secret? Sometimes she thought that he half suspected her already, and she feared that she could scarcely speak of a subject that touched her heart's interests so closely without revealing to those keen gray eyes more than she would have them see. But the risk must be taken to save Graydon.
"Can it be?" she said, after musing awhile, "that Henry is in any such danger as that man asserted, or was it a trumped-up scheme to influence the girl? Still, he did say that if she would choose Graydon and poverty he would not interpose. Poverty! I would welcome bondage and chains with Graydon. I would almost welcome Henry's failure, that I might prove to them my devotion. Every penny of my fortune should be theirs. Henry has looked very anxious and troubled sometimes when thinking himself unobserved. He keeps everything to himself so—"
Suddenly she sprang up with a flash of joy in her face, and whispered to herself, excitedly: "Suppose there is truth in what was said by those speculators. I have a fortune, and it's my own. Henry said it was so left to me that I could control it after I was eighteen. I can lend Henry the money to pay Arnault. I will give him every penny I possess to carry him safely through. Oh, I am so glad he is coming to-night!"
"Come down to supper," called Mrs. Muir.