At the clubs, substantial and easily forgotten loans to members of the embarrassed elect, coupled with vague hints, rarely failed to pay dividends in the form of invitations to ultra-exclusive affaires.
At the hostelry the St. Ledger soirées, if so glitteringly bizarre as to draw high-browed frowns from the more reserved and staid of the thinning old guard of ancestor-worshipers, nevertheless, were enthusiastically hailed and eagerly attended by the younger set, and played no small part in the insinuation of "those St. Ledgers" into the realms of the anointed.
Thus the winter wore away, and, at all times and in all places Gregory St. Ledger appeared as the devoted satellite of Ethel Manton, who entered the social mêlée without enthusiasm, but with dogged determination to let the world see that the disappearance of Bill Carmody affected her not at all.
She tolerated St. Ledger, even encouraged him, for he amused and offered a welcome diversion for her thoughts.
She was a girl of moods whose imagination carried her into far places in the picturing of a man—her man—big, and strong, and clean; fighting bare-fisted among men for his place in the world, and alone conquering the secret devil of desire that he might claim the right to her love.
Then it was, curled up in the big armchair in the library, the blue eyes would glow softly and tenderly in the flare of the flickering firelight, and between parted lips the warm breath would come and go in short stabbing whispers to the quick rise and fall of the rounded bosom, and the little fists would clench white in the tense gladness of it.
But there were other times—times when the dancing wall-shadows were dark specters of ill-omen gloating ghoulishly before her horror-widened eyes as her brain conjured the picture of the man—battered, broken, helpless, with bloated, sottish features, and bleared eyes—a beaten man drifting heedlessly, hopelessly, furtive-eyed, away from his standards—and from her.
At such times the breath would flutter uncertainly between cold, bloodless lips, and the marble whiteness of her face became a pallid death mask of despair.
Always in extremes she pictured him, for, knowing the man as she knew him—the bigness of him—the relentless dynamic man-power of his being, she knew that with him there would be no half-way measure—no median line of indifferent achievement which should stand for neither the good nor the bad among men.
Here was no Tomlinson whose little sins and passive virtues became the jest of the gods; but a man who in the final accounting would stand four-square upon the merit of his works, and in the might of their right or wrong, accept fearlessly his reward.