"Goin' to leave his property away from his wife! Makin' a new will—eh? That's it, stamp on a girl when she's down! When you can't win the woman, keep the cash. Woe is me, Willy, but the wild one rageth!"
Jonas' drawling, nasal, high-pitched sarcasm reached Mazarine's ears and stung him. He lurched round, and with beady eyes blinking with malice, said roughly: "The fool is known by his folly."
"You don't need to label yourself, Mr. Mazarine," retorted Jonas with a grin.
The crowd laughed in approval. The loose lower lip of the Master of
Tralee quivered. The leviathan was being tortured by the little sharks.
Presently the door of the lawyer's office slammed on the street, and Mazarine proceeded to make a new will, which should leave everything away from Louise. After he had slowly dictated the terms of the will, with a glutinous solemnity he said:
"There; that's what comes of breaking the laws of God and man. That's what a woman loses who doesn't do her duty by the man that can give her everything, and that's give her everything, while she plays the Jezebel."
"I'll complete this for you, and you can sign it now," remarked the lawyer evasively, not without shrinking; "but it won't stand as it is, or as you want it to stand, because Mrs. Mazarine has her legal claims in spite of it! She's got a wife's dower-rights according to the law. That's one-third of your property. It's the law of the land, and you can't sign it away from her, Mr. Mazarine."
The old man's face darkened still more; his crooked fingers twisted in his beard.
"I see you forgot that," added the lawyer. "There's only one way to dispossess her, and that's to put her through Divorce—if you think you can. Of course this document'll stand as far as it goes, and it's perfectly legal, but it isn't what you intend, and she'd get her one- third in spite of it."
"I'll come back to-morrow," said the old man, rising to his feet. "You make it out, and I'll come back and sign it to-morrow. I'll make a sure thing of so much, anyway. The divorce'll settle the rest. You have it ready at noon to-morrow, and you can start divorce proceedings to-morrow too. There's plenty of evidence. She run away from me to go to him. She stayed with him a whole night on the prairie. I want the divorce, and I can get the evidence. Everybody knows. This is the Lord's business, and I mean to see it through. Shame has come to the house of a servant of the Lord, and there must be purging. In the days of David she would have been stoned to death, and not so far back as that, either."