They went home, and Cecil set out to trace Molly and her lover, vowing to himself a dark revenge upon the man for whom his wife had deserted and disgraced him.
The Barry and Laurens families became more intimate than ever. There was an unspoken desire on each side that Cecil would procure a divorce from his faithless wife and marry the real Louise Barry.
There seemed small prospect of their hopes being gratified, for the angry husband did not give up the quest for John Keith for two years, and during those two years he never once came home.
Letters came from him but seldom. He was always on the wing—always following some new clue, spending money like water in the effort to trace the fugitives. Mrs. Laurens complained that he was spending all his income in that wild and foolish pursuit, but to her entreaties that he would come home he paid not the slightest heed. She had not given him much sympathy in his sorrow and his heart had grown cold to her. He felt vaguely that her hauteur had helped to drive his wife to despair and flight.
“If we had not neglected her so much, if we had pitied and forgiven her a little sooner, her heart would not have turned against me,” he thought often; and remembering how his mother had tried to keep up the feud, he found it hard to forgive her interference.
But the sudden death of his father nearly three years after his wife’s flight brought the wanderer home again.
Nina had married a year ago, and gone to a home in Richmond, of which she was the light and life. Only the mother and Dot remained at Maple Shade, where the family of six had once made everything bright and cheerful.
“You must never leave us again, Cecil,” they said, piteously, and he stayed with them in their loneliness and sorrow until another year had rolled by.
Then Doctor Charley Laurens came home, and brought a lovely English bride, for whom the family threw off its somber mourning and made merry.
Nina and her husband came from Richmond, Louise Barry from Ferndale, other guests from Lewisburg, until the large house was full of friends who came to join in the festivities over the marriage and return of the favorite son.