“Yes,” Mrs. Allestree replied in a matter-of-fact tone, stern business in her eye as she added: “you’ll have to give it back at once, Stephen, and, of course, you’ll be responsible for it while it’s here. Now, you give that check to Rose, I want to hear the child sing.”
The judge sighed profoundly, his head bowed. “I’d rather be whipped, Jane,” he said brokenly, “but the child has set her heart on it—and I’ve shown myself an old fool!”
Mrs. Allestree rose. “You have!” she said uncompromisingly, “but then we’re both way behind the times. In the first place you’ve only had one wife and I’ve only had one husband! Margaret White left for Omaha to-day; of course she’ll be divorced and married to my nephew in half an hour. I’ve some hope now of being fashionable, if I can get a motor accident in the family! And you’re broken hearted because your girl wants to sing in public; tut, Stephen, you’re a hopeless old fogy, go and marry Martha O’Neal!”
BOOK II
I
IT was early in the following December before Mrs. Allestree again came face to face with the situation which was so intimately connected, though in such different ways, with the happiness of two members of her family, her son and her nephew. The long months that had intervened, however, had not dulled her remembrance of that vivid scene in Margaret’s bedroom, or lessened the degree of her secret sympathy—which was in exact opposition to her judgment.
It was a long time indeed before she could recur to that scene without a poignant feeling of guilt; her conscience pinched her with self-righteousness; she had found the mote in her sister’s eye without seeing the beam in her own, she had judged without experience. However, after awhile, this sensitiveness was enveloped in a thicker moral coating, and she began again to view the affair with horror. The two little White children were constant spectacles in the parks with their two French nurses and their general air of bewildered desolation; it was perfectly well known that Estelle had raised a terrible outcry for her mother and refused to be comforted, in spite of the conscientious efforts of poor old Mrs. White who, whatever her faults, was sincere in her devotion to the two poor little waifs of wealth.
Mr. White, meanwhile, had created fresh scandal by his open devotion to Lily Osborne, and would probably have been still more outrageous if that astute young woman had not judiciously absented herself from the city at the very moment when society had reached the limit of its endurance; but her disappearance from the surface scarcely arrested White’s downward career; he was plunging deeper and deeper, and there were many rumors of scandals connected with his administration which would lead to his dismissal from the Cabinet. Some secret information from the Navy Department had found its way into the hands of a foreign government, and the way of its passage through White’s careless hands to Lily Osborne’s and from hers to the representative of the foreign power was unfortunately made altogether too plain to be ignored except on the surface of things, to hush scandal.
December found Washington a little aghast; Congress had just re-assembled, Wicklow White had somewhat hastily resigned, almost on the date which, in the previous year, had seen the retirement of Wingfield, and one of the ambassadors had been as hastily recalled, clearing the atmosphere of an international situation with the accustomed scapegoat! That the Cabinet would have to be reorganized was evident, and Berkman’s prophecy of eight months before was apparently on the eve of fulfilment. The very atmosphere, surcharged with excitement, seemed to breathe the name of William Fox; only those who knew the secret of Margaret’s divorce, which had just been granted in Omaha, divined the fatal combination of circumstances.
Fox had been absent for months in his own state, taking part in a campaign of unusual bitterness and importance, and his remarkable powers of organization, his keen policy, his magnetic eloquence, had carried all before him. There had been, in fact, a storm of applause; every newspaper in the country had discussed him as a possible candidate for the Presidency in the following year, his own party with triumphant confidence, and the opposing faction with reluctant admission of his great strength. If anything had delayed his invitation to take a seat in the Cabinet, it was openly hinted to be the jealousy of the Administration and an uncertainty whether such a position would conveniently shelve him or increase his popularity.