He stood before her like a schoolboy culprit. “I own property in this ward,” he said shamefacedly. “Old Denver, that keeps a saloon near Smith’s shop, came to me to sign his license. The man has to get his living. I didn’t think—and put my name down. That’s what stings now,” he went on contritely. “Perhaps Smith got his liquor there.”
Stargarde drew herself up to her full height. “Do I understand you to say that you, a reasonable, intelligent, human being, knowing what would be the effect of alcoholic poison on your own system, and refusing to partake of it, would yet sign a paper allowing this poison to be sold to your fellow-citizens, every one of whom is as precious in the sight of God as yourself?”
His silence gave the answer to her question, and she went on with clasped hands and eyes raised to the ceiling in a protest of despair: “There is no name for this awful traffic—no words to express the frightful misery of it. With all that has been said and written, no words have yet been found to fitly characterize it. It is unspeakable, indescribable, and,” with a swift dropping from the abstract to the real, “to think that you, Brian, would touch it even with the tip of your little finger!” She dropped into a seat by the table, laid her head on her arms, and burst into tears.
She was disappointed in him, and, stung by a thousand furies, he made no further attempt to justify himself, but rushed from her presence.
CHAPTER XXI
A QUIET EVENING
Dinner was over at Pinewood, and all the family but Mr. Armour sat, stood, or walked about in the rose du Barry atmosphere of the drawing room.
“The outlook seems more gory than usual,” muttered Valentine, with a groan, placing his handsome figure in a partially-shaded corner, “probably because all the lamps are going. Confound those carnation shades, and confound the everlasting desire of women to have their own way! If Flora decided to hang the place with crêpe we’d have to submit. I wish Pinewood had a different mistress,” and the young man glanced discontentedly at her, as she sat quietly engaged with some work in a flow of ruddy light from her favorite lamp.
The night was a cold one. The great furnace and the open fires in the house were burning with wild and headstrong draughts, and from the crossed sticks of wood on the drawing-room hearth, mad, scarlet flames went leaping toward the outer air.
Mrs. Colonibel was thinking about an approaching dance—thinking so busily, as she drew the silken threads in and out of her linen, that she had no time, as she usually had, to bestow glances of suppressed jealous anger on Vivienne and Judy. The two girls were wandering about the room arm in arm, having just come in from the conservatory, where Judy had plucked camellias and scarlet geraniums to make a corsage bouquet for Vivienne.
Colonel Armour sat by the fire, pretending to read, but surreptitiously watching Vivienne, who seemed to be clad in a kind of unearthly beauty in the roseate hue cast over her face and white figure by the colored lights of the room.