“And you wouldn’t give it?” he inquired mildly, inwardly surprised, as he had been often before, at the rancor displayed by women in their quarrels.
“Give it?” she exclaimed, “well, I guess not. It would have been my surrender. I’d have thrown up the fight for ever when I did that.” And then as if she had read his thoughts: “It’s not natural meanness either. There’s only one hope for me—for me and for Dominick, too. Divorce.”
He did not move his chin from its resting-place in his up-curled hand, but made a slight assenting motion with his head, and said,
“I suppose that’s the only thing.”
“That’s been my hope since the day when I first saw her. I didn’t know then she’d been anything to Dominick before the marriage, but I knew the first look I had at her what she was. That long, mean nose and those sly eyes, and seven years older than the boy if she was a day. You didn’t have to tell me any more. I saw then just like a flash in the dark what my son had let himself in for. And then, not a month after, I heard the rest about her, and I knew that Dominick had started in to ruin his life about the best way he knew how.”
Cannon gave another grunt, and this time it contained a recognizable note of sympathy. She went on, absorbed in her recital, anxious to pour out her griefs, now that she had begun.
“Right there from the start I thought of divorce. I knew it was the only way out and was bound to come in time. The woman had married Dominick for money and position. I knew that, saw it in her face along with other things. There was no love in that face, just calculation, hard and sharp as a meat ax. I shut down on the money right there and then. Dominick had three thousand a year, so I knew he couldn’t starve, but three thousand a year wasn’t what she’d married him for.”
“She’s got along on it for over two years.”
“That’s it. She’s beaten me so far. I’m the keeper of Con Ryan’s fortune and I just closed my hand on it and said to her in so many words, ‘Not a cent of this for you.’ I thought she’d tire of struggling along in a flat with one Chinaman and not a soul to come near her. But she’s stood it and she’s going to go on standing it. Where she’s concerned, I did something the smartest men and women sometimes do—underrated the brains of my enemy.”
“She’s pretty smart, I guess,” said Cannon, raising a gravely-commenting eye to his companion’s face.