Then her eyes would see in the purplish light of her picture a certain face that meant another life. She would blush to herself, and her voice would stop. For she couldn't think aloud about him.
Some days, when the murky twilight came on early, she would steal away altogether from the gay party in Winetka and spend the night with her lonely father. They would have a queer, stately dinner for three served in the grand dining-room by the English butler and footman. Stuart never had much to say to her; she wasn't his "smart," queenly wife who brought all people to her feet. When he came to his cigar and his whiskey, she would take young Spencer to the gallery, where they discussed the new French pictures, very knowingly, Spencer thought. She would describe for him the intricacies of a color-scheme of some tender Diaz, and that would lead them into the leafy woods about Barbizon and other realms of sentiment.
When they returned to the library she would feel that there were compensations for this dreary separation at Winetka and that her enormous home had never been so nice and comfortable before. As she bade the two men good-night, her father would come to the door, rubbing his eyes and forlorn over his great loss, and to her murmured "Good-night" he would sigh, "so like her mother." "Quite the softest voice in the world," thought Spencer.
Once in her old little tower room that she still preferred to keep, covered with her various attempts at sea, and sky, and forest, she was blissfully conscious of independence, so far from Stuyvesant Wheelright and his mother—quite an ugly old dame with no better manners than the plain Chicago people (who despised them all as "pork-packers" and "shop-keepers," nevertheless).
On one of these visits late in October, Edith had found her father ailing from a cold. He asked her, shamefacedly, to tell her mother that "he was very bad." Mrs. Stuart, leaving the house-party in full go, started at once for the town-house. Old Stuart had purposely stayed at home on the chances that his wife would relent. When she came in, she found him lying in the same morning-room, where hostilities had begun three months before. He grew confused, like an erring school-boy, as his wife kissed him and asked after his health in a neutral sort of way. He made out that he was threatened with a complication of diseases that might finally end him.
"Well, what can I do for you now," Mrs. Stuart said, with business-like directness.
"Spencer's looking after things pretty much. He's honest and faithful, but he ain't got any head like yours, Beatty, and times are awful hard. People won't pay rents, and I don't dare to throw 'em out. Stores and houses would lie empty these days. Then there's the North Shore Electric—I was a fool to go in so heavy the Fair year and tie up all my money. I s'pose you know the bonds ain't reached fifty this fall. I'm not so tremendously wealthy as folks think."
Mrs. Stuart exactly comprehended this sly speech; she knew also that there was some truth in it.
"Say, Beatty, it's so nice to have you here!" The old man raised himself and capered about like a gouty old house-dog.
He made the most of his illness, for he suspected that it was a condition of truce, not a bond of peace. While he was in bed Mrs. Stuart drove to the city each day and, with Spencer's help, conducted business for long hours. She had had experience in managing large charities; she knew people, and when a tenant could pay, with a little effort, he found Madam more pitiless than the old shop-keeper. Every afternoon she would take her stenographer to Stuart's room and consult with him.