“I am released on my own bail,” he said. “I wish to see my wife.”
“I do not think you can see her. She was very ill all night, and no one but her maid can be admitted into the room.”
“I am her husband, and I insist upon being admitted!” he replied angrily.
“I will ask if she will see you. But what if she refuses?”
“I do not believe that she will refuse. Why should she?” he replied. “She married me of her own free will, when she thought I was rich, and only ran away from me when she found out I was poor and could not give her the luxuries she craved. Now I can give her both wealth and a title, and no doubt she will be only too glad to accept them.”
“And you?” she asked wonderingly. “Are you willing to devote yourself to a wife who would value you only for those glittering externals?”
“I would take her on any terms,” he replied, and she foresaw that in the event of Fair refusing his wish there would be sore trouble ahead for the willful girl.
But she did not believe Fair would refuse her husband’s overtures of peace. Why, as he very pertinently asked, should she do so? It had been proved that she was mercenary and designing. The husband whom she had deserted on the score of poverty was rich and powerful now. Of course she would make up with him. Perhaps she would be glad of the way things had turned out.
It made her very sad to think how cruelly she had been disappointed in Fair. How earnestly she had declared that she was incapable of marrying for money! Yet Mrs. Howard doubted not that her acceptance of Bayard Lorraine’s suit had been based on mercenary principles. She thought of the poor fellow lying wounded and near to the gates of death for the false girl’s sake, and felt indignant and disgusted.
“I wash my hands of her, princess though she be through her marriage, and I will never have anything more to do with her,” she mentally decided; but just then there rose into her mind a thought of the dark day when, sitting by her dead daughter, she had seen such a lovely vision—a vision that had led her to adopt Fair into Azalia’s sacred place. Her tears began to fall.