His suggestion produced a ghastly silence. Mrs. Galt tried to turn it away. Galt was alert.
“What have I stepped on now?” he wanted to know. “Suffering Moses! It ain’t safe for me to walk around in my own house. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Natalie.
“Yes, there is. What is it?”
When he couldn’t be put off any longer Vera said, quietly: “My engagement to Lord Porteous is broken.”
“Why?” asked Galt, astonished. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“No matter why,” said Vera. “Let’s not talk about it.”
He looked into their faces severally. His expression was utterly wretched and they avoided it. He guessed the reason why,—made it perhaps even worse than it was.
In his own household he was on the defensive. There was always that inaudible accusation he could never get hold of. In the old days it was that he stretched them on the rack of insecurity and was not like other men. Then it was the way he had made them rich. Now it was that dreadful sense of insecurity again. They did not know whether they were rich or poor. They thought he was heading for a last spectacular smash-up. And suppose he had told them there was happily no danger of that. Their thoughts would accuse him still. Why couldn’t they be rich as other people were, decently, quietly and in good taste? The Valentines were rich and no obloquy pursued them. Their privacy was not besieged by newspaper reporters. The finger of scorn never pointed at them.
Vera’s broken engagement was a harrowing symbol. Galt was extremely miserable. One could imagine what he was thinking. The Galt fortune was saved. The Galt power had survived. But the Galt name was a sound of reproach. The public opinion that had so devastated his spirit did not leave his family unwhipped. These women had suffered for being his. Though they might not believe the things that were said of him, still they could not help feeling ashamed of the wealth he had brought them. They were defenseless. He was clothed with a sense of justification that he could not impart. They were naked to the scourge.