“Yes. She’ll make it possible for you to escape from all this, to live in the way you ought to live, and to have the position and amusements you are entitled to. As I said to you before, she’s got no ill feeling toward you except as her son’s wife. She wishes you well, and to prove it she is ready to make you the most generous offer.”
Berny’s rigidity relaxed and she leaned against the chair-back. She said nothing, but her eyes remained fixed on his face.
“I told you she was generous and see if I am not right,” he continued. “She will make you a rich woman, independent of any one, the money yours to do with as you like, if you’ll consent to the few conditions she exacts.”
“What are they?”
“That you will leave your husband for a year and at the end of that time ask him to give you your liberty, he suing you for divorce on the ground of desertion.”
There was a pause. Berny had moved her eyes from the old man’s face, and was looking at the blotter upon which her hand had again closed. The cheek turned to him was a deep rose pink. He looked at her unembarrassed and inquiring, as though he had made an ordinary business proposition.
“It’s a bribe,” she said slowly, “a bribe to leave my husband.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he answered with a deprecating shrug. “Call it a deal, a settlement. The terms are easy and favorable. You’ll not find one of them unjust or unfair. You’re to leave the city, going preferably to Chicago or New York and staying there for the period of desertion. Seven thousand dollars will be set aside for your expenses. At the end of the year you are to write to Dominick telling him you no longer want to live with him and asking him to give you your freedom. After the divorce is granted the sum of fifty thousand dollars will be handed over to you, the one condition being that you will leave the country and go to Europe. It is also understood, of course, that the matter’s to be kept a secret from Dominick. He must think that you are acting entirely from your own free will. He mustn’t guess his mother’s had any part in it.”
“She’s not ashamed to try to buy me off, but she’s ashamed to have her precious boy know it!”
The old man looked at her with a slight, indulgent smile, inwardly wondering how Dominick Ryan had endured life with this woman.