But she was not the woman to give way to fear for long, or even to bewilderment. There could be no real danger, and all that should concern her was the outrageous, the intolerably vulgar publicity. A woman whose good taste was both natural and cultivated, she felt this ruthless tossing of her sacred person into the public maw much as the more refined octoroons may have felt when they stood on the auction block in the good old days down South. She shuddered and gritted her teeth; she wished that she were a hysterical woman that she might find relief in shrieking at the top of her voice and smashing the furniture.
Why, oh why, could not David Balfame have been permitted by the fate which had decreed his end on that particular night to enter the house and drink the lemonade; to die decently, painlessly, bloodlessly (she shrank aside when compelled to pass those blood stains on the brick path), as any man might die when his overtaxed heart simply stopped? She would have run down the moment she heard the fall, she would have managed to get the glass out of the way if Frieda had condescended to visit the scene, which was quite unlikely. She would have run over to Doctor Lequer, who lived next door to the Gifnings, and he would have sent for the coroner. Both inevitably would have pronounced the death due to heart failure. It was fate that had bungled, not she.
She mused, however, that she should have had a duplicate glass of lemonade to leave half consumed on the table, as it would be recalled that he had expected to imbibe a soothing draught immediately upon his return; and adjacent liquids invariably induce suspicion in cases of sudden death. But that did not matter now.
She set her wits to work upon the identity of her companion in the grove. Was it Frieda? Or an accomplice of the girl, who was already in the house or on the alert to direct him out by the rear pathway? But why Frieda? She knew the raging hate that had filled her husband since the declaration of war, and she knew that his rivals in politics hated him with increasing virulency; as they were beginning to hate everybody that presumed to question the right and might of Germany.
But she was a woman just and sensible. Nor for a moment could she visualise Old Dutch or any of his tribe shooting David Balfame because he cursed the Kaiser and sang Tipperary. The supposition was too shallow to be entertained.
The person in the grove had been either a bitter political rival too intimate with the local police to be in danger of arrest, or some woman who for a time may have believed herself to be his wife in the larger village of New York.
She could have sworn that that stealthy figure so close to her was a man, but women's skirts were very narrow and silent these days, and after all she herself was as tall as the average man.
Before noon the house was filled with sympathising and indignant friends. Cummack came up town to assure her that it was a shame; and he would ask Rush if those New York papers couldn't be had up for libel. He'd take the eleven-thirty for Dobton and consult with him.
The ladies were knitting, no one more impersonally than Mrs. Balfame, although she was wondering if these kind friends expected to stay to lunch, when an automobile drove honking up to the door, and Mrs. Battle teetered over to the window.
"For the land's sake," she exclaimed. "If it isn't the deputy sheriff from Dobton. Now, what do you suppose?"