CHAPTER XII
At twelve o’clock the following day, Edith Rogers entered the offices of Messrs. Gruber, McMillan, Brennan & Shaw, at Number 11 Wall Street, and asked to see Mr. Brennan. She was at once ushered into the latter’s private office, and found him awaiting her.
This visit to Mr. Brennan’s office was to Edith an ordeal that she greatly dreaded, and one that it had required all of her courage to face. All the night before she had lain awake, thinking about it, and even with the coming of the day her fears had not to any great extent left her.
For one thing, however, she felt thankful. Donald had, at the last moment, decided not to accompany her. At first he had insisted upon doing so, partly because of her unfamiliarity with business affairs, more because of her nervous and unstrung condition, the result of the terrible shock which the news of West’s death had given her. She had done her best to conceal her sufferings, or at least so to modify them that Donald might have no suspicion of their real cause, and in this she had been more successful than she had supposed possible. After the first shock which Mr. Brennan’s words had given her, she was conscious of a reaction, resulting in a sort of numbness, in which her mind was filled less with thoughts of the man she had supposed she loved than with a ghastly fear lest the fact of this love might become known to her husband.
Had she been able to analyze, during all the eternities of that horrible night, the cause of this fear, she might have realized that her love for West had been no love at all, but only a sudden infatuation, born of her overweening vanity and love for the good things of life on the one hand, and her utter failure to appreciate her husband’s rugged honesty of purpose on the other. The very fact that her horror at the thought that Donald might learn of her affair with West overshadowed all else in her mind, might have told her that she still valued her husband’s love and that of her child, far above that of the man who had so suddenly been taken away from her.
Donald, who sat beside her most of the night, was too generous, too unsuspicious a nature, to attribute her tears to anything but a very natural grief at the loss of a dear friend. He felt the matter keenly himself, but, man-like, strove to hide his own sufferings in order that he might the more readily comfort her.
Mrs. Pope and Alice had remained until midnight. They would have stayed longer, but Edith would not permit it. “I’m all right, mother,” she said, choking back her tears. “Go home and get your rest. I’ll see you to-morrow.”
So the mother departed, accompanied by Alice. Her whole attitude toward Edith seemed to have undergone a sudden transformation. The latter was now rich—the possessor of half a million dollars, and hence no longer to be criticised or blamed for having married a poor man. Even toward Donald her manner had changed. She addressed him as “my dearest boy,” and threw out vague hints concerning Edith’s and Bobbie’s health and the sea air which they so greatly needed. Donald paid little attention to her. He recognized her shallow-souled adoration of money and secretly despised it.