Selfishness and greed and fear had stood for her boy's sponsor, had marred both these women's lives. And Justice, smiling grimly, saw one floating on a flood-tide of prosperity, made happy and successful by her scheming. The other an outcast, broken in health and spirit. Justice sat quiet. To some the whip is administered at once; to all the punishment, the payment of the fine. Interest grows in the black ledger of our sins.
Two women had schemed successfully, and other lives were drawn now into the mesh.
"I am very tired of it all, Estelle." Bertie got up restlessly. "Very tired. My home is no home. My old friends look at me with a pity which is worse than enmity. I went to Denise Blakeney once. I asked if she knew what was amiss, and she turned red and white and stammered, and 'Oh, no, of course not—unless there might be some scandal, something foolish.' I came away, knowing she would not tell me the truth she knew of."
Estelle's head turned away; she knew; she had heard the black suspicion, but she could not tell Bertie Carteret that the world held his wife to be a thief. Better let him suspect the other, which was not true.
"Well, little companion?" He stopped his restless pacing, looked down at the sunny brown hair, and at the girl's sweet, glowing face. "How is it all to end?"
"When I go back to—to Cape Town," she said.
The words were as knives slashing at self-control, cold steel carving finely at an open raw.
"No," he slipped out. "By Heaven! you shall not go."
"But I must." Then Estelle's voice faltered; she knew what it would be to part, with nothing known of love save imagining, save a few hand-clasps—friends must not kiss; save the sweetness of nearness driving home from theatres.
"No," he said again. He caught her hands suddenly, held them closely.