But that was not her own problem. No doubt Mrs. Balfame would be acquitted; Alys hoped so, at all events, for she wanted no such a stain on Elsinore, where, she thanked God, she lived, although she sought knowledge and income in the City of New York. For the same reason, she had no desire that the guilty woman should pay her debt by even a brief term in Auburn; but all that was beside the point. What Alys felt she would give her soul to ravish from this thrice accursed woman, so formidable in her peril, were the services of Dwight Rush. If he were Mrs. Balfame's chief counsel he would see her constantly, and alone—for hours on end, perhaps, for he must consult with her, rehearse her, instruct her, keep up her spirits, console her. This might not be the whole duty of counsel, but in the circumstances no doubt she had underestimated, if anything. And even if he believed her guilty, he might in that intimacy love her the more; not only would he pity her profoundly and see himself her natural protector, but he would be heart and soul in the great case, and it would not be long before the case and the woman were one.
If, however, Rush could be made to believe now that the woman was a murderess, would he not decline to take the case? He was hardly the man to defend man or woman whom from the outset he knew to be guilty, although when immersed in the case he would keep on, whatever the revelations. Alys believed that it was possible for her to convince him. She could inform him of the needle-witted Mr. Broderick's suspicions and of her own confirmations; and she could tell him of her certain knowledge that Mrs. Balfame had a revolver; she had seen it eight months ago, when Balfame brought it home from New York and told his wife to discharge it in the air if, when alone, she heard a man breaking in.
It had signified little to her at the moment that Mrs. Balfame had denied to police and reporters that she possessed a revolver, for it might by chance be a .41, and it was not to be expected that even an innocent woman would challenge public doubt and possible arrest. But her denial and probable concealment of the weapon were significant to Alys now. She remembered that Dr. Anna had spent the early hours of Sunday alone with Mrs. Balfame. No doubt the wicked woman had found both relief and counsel in confessing to a friend like Anna Steuer, a creature so strong and staunch that the secret would be as safe as in her own guilty soul. Anna, of course, had taken the pistol and dropped it in the marsh when she visited Farmer Houston's wife later in the day. If she could but get Dr. Anna to speak.
Alys raised her eyes under their bent and frowning brows and looked up to where the Brabant Hospital stood on rising ground beside the sea. She gave a gasp as she found herself turning the horse's head in that direction. What did she intend to do? Denounce Mrs. Balfame to Dwight Rush? She fancied she heard an inner crash. Could she do this and escape final demoralisation? Heretofore she had at least committed no act involving moral degradation; her upheavals had affected herself alone and were her inviolate secret; but if she made a last desperate throw to win Dwight Rush by first filling him with loathing of her rival, she would be committed to a course of conduct from which there would be no escape for months, perhaps years to come. For if she won him,—toward which end she must plan with every female art she knew,—she never could ease her soul with confession. Her only chance of keeping a man like that, after the first effulgence had merged into the healthy temperateness of practical married life, was to avoid the major disillusions.
And if she by her own deliberate act went to pieces morally, could she play up? Should she even want to play up? Could one deliberately knock the foundations from under one's cherished spiritual structure, reared with infinite pains upon natural inclinations, and continue to be even a pale reflection of one's higher self? She might, after the first excitement of striving to achieve her immediate object was over, hate herself too deeply to love or even to live.
She drew her brows more closely and expelled her breath through her teeth. For the moment, at least, she felt all female, ready to defy the future and her own soul to obtain possession of her mate. That he was her mate she obstinately believed, temporarily deflected from his natural progress toward herself by one of those powerful delusions that afflict every man in the course of his life. And if she did not open his eyes at once, the temporary deflection would merge into the straight course toward marriage with a she-demon....
She drove into the hospital yard, threw the reins over Colonel Roosevelt's back and asked for the superintendent, Mrs. Dissosway, who happened to be her aunt.