Colegrove rose too. He had implanted the notion in her mind that March, after all, had sacrificed her, and that she was nothing to him. A new expression came into Alicia's speaking eyes. She looked fixedly at Colegrove and then bent her head in reflection.
"I go now," said Colegrove, "to fight my battle. I don't know how, or when, or where it will end, but if they drag me down I will, like Samson, drag down all I can with me, and the crash will be heard from one end of this continent to the other. Here is an address that will always find me."
He lifted her passive hand to his lips, put a card within it, and went away without another word.
Alicia spent the intervening hours between then and a solitary dinner walking up and down the great drawing-rooms. She did not give Colegrove a thought; her mind, agonised and tormented, was working upon the problem whether or not March, in the intensity of his anger, had deliberately sacrificed her.
The sense of fitness and good taste, which had never left Alicia Vernon, remained with Alicia March. She did not run away from Washington, but, having determined to take up the attitude of an injured woman, remained in her house, but in strict seclusion. Every day she took the air in a closed carriage, or, heavily veiled, walked for hours. She continually met her acquaintances, who spoke to her coolly and passed on, and Alicia did the same. A few persons, chiefly silly women and foolish young men, left cards for her, but Mrs. March, knowing that such backing was a detriment instead of a help, was excused at the door. She had received an immediate response from her father, who had taken the first steamer for America. Within a fortnight from the day Roger March left his home General Talbott arrived. He knew of March's resignation from the Senate, and Alicia, in the first hour of her father's arrival, put in his hand the newspaper which contained the charges and The Congressional Record, with March's speech, and left him to draw his own conclusion. General Talbott read them through carefully, and then, taking Alicia's hand, said to her with tears in his brave old eyes:
"My child, you have been singled out for ill-treatment, and to bear the sins of others. March's conduct was inherently wrong, but it showed a cruel disregard of you not to make some show of fight for his name. Your father, however, will remain your steadfast friend."
The presence of General Talbott sensibly improved Alicia March's position in Washington. His old friends, of whom he had many, called to see him, and perforce left cards for Mrs. March. Among them was the card of Sir Percy Carlyon, but no card was left for Alicia, nor did Lady Carlyon's card accompany her husband's. Alicia observed this, but she did not choose to notice it openly at present. She meant that considerable time should pass before she began an active struggle to regain her lost position.
Early in May the great house was shut up and Alicia March and her father sailed for England. It was two years and a half before she reappeared in Washington. During that interval no one in Washington heard of March, except Watson, who received occasional communications from him on business. He seemed to have dropped out of the world; the depths of the Sierras is a very good hiding-place for a broken-hearted man.
Those two years and a half seemed to be unclouded for the Carlyons. Sir Percy found his mission exactly to his liking, and his prestige was steadily increased by his management of affairs. It even met with the approval of Lord Baudesert, who found himself unable to keep away from his beloved Washington. Mrs. Chantrey, whose hopes of being an Ambassadress had been dashed by Lord Baudesert's retirement, still cherished dreams of being Lady Baudesert, and was warmly encouraged in her aspirations by that wicked old gentleman during his whole visit to Washington. Eleanor Chantrey had remained unmarried. Her beauty and her fortune would have enabled her to make a choice of many brilliant marriages, but deep in her heart rankled something like disappointment. She had not been in love with Sir Percy Carlyon, but she would have married him if he had asked her, an attitude of mind commoner among women towards men than is generally supposed. Eleanor was certainly fitted to be an Ambassadress, but Lady Carlyon had fitted herself with consummate address for that lofty position. Lord Baudesert was openly delighted at the position which Lady Carlyon had made for herself. Her dignity, her sweetness and good sense had given her also a prestige which made her backing of the greatest value. Every woman in Washington society whose social and personal record was not like the driven snow was eager for the support of Lady Carlyon. With natural good judgment and acquired prudence Lady Lucy, as Lord Baudesert, like Sir Percy, called her, managed to escape every pitfall. She could neither be used, nor worked, wheedled, nor bullied, but pursued a course inspired alike by good taste and good feeling. Her two boys increased day by day in beauty and intelligence, and Sir Percy would have reckoned himself among the happiest as well as the most successful of men but for the memory of Alicia March. He was haunted by the thought, not without reason, that he was responsible for the tragedy which had befallen Roger March. He could readily imagine the motive which inspired March, and the thought of him dragged down by his wife's dishonour, seeking oblivion in the farthest corner of the continent, was a keen and ever-present regret to Sir Percy Carlyon. He had heard occasionally from General Talbott, who was abroad with his daughter. The great March house remained closed but tenantless, and Sir Percy surmised that Alicia March would in time return to the scene of her greatest triumphs and her deepest humiliation.
The echoes of the great railway scandal lasted during all of these two years and a half. Colegrove was not the man to go down without a terrific struggle. March's acknowledgment of the charges and his resignation would have been too strong for any except the strongest of men to withstand, but Colegrove, finding himself with his back to the wall, fought with a desperation worthy of a better cause. He had the money, the courage and the adroitness to drag everything into the courts, where the law's delay was a great help to him. So many powerful interests were involved that they made a bulwark around him. At the end of the two years and a half he was actually in much better case than he had been when he had first been pinned to the wall by his enemies, and his supply of ammunition had been increased. He had succeeded, by pouring out money like water, in enmeshing everybody and everything in a legal tangle from which no one could see a way out. His natural genius for making money was such that he could always contrive to make vast sums, and the wonder was, as with a clever pickpocket, why he did not satisfy himself with the brilliant success he could have made legitimately. Every two or three months during that time he communicated with Alicia March. He had an apparent reason for doing so, as he represented that the stocks held for her in his name were always earning dividends, and every letter contained a cheque. One of these letters informed her that his wife had got a divorce from him. The poor lady had in truth been goaded into it. Alicia March made no reference to this in the brief replies she sent to his letters.