She told McNiven a story that agreed in the essentials with Jim's except that she made herself out the fool where he had blamed himself. McNiven had no success in trying to quiet her with soothing promises of a tame conclusion. She dreaded Kedzie.
“If it were just an outburst of jealousy,” she said, “you might talk to the woman. But she's not jealous of her husband. She was as cool as a cucumber when she found us together. She was glad of it, because she had got a way to get her Marquess now. She's ambitious and Lady Macbeth couldn't outdo her.”
She told McNiven what she had not had the heart to tell Jim about Strathdene. It worried him more than he admitted. While he meditated on a measure to meet this sort of attack, Charity suggested one. It was drastic, but she was desperate. She proposed the threat of a countercharge against Kedzie.
McNiven shook his head and made strange noises in his pipe. He asked for evidence against Kedzie. Charity could only quote the general opinion.
McNiven said: “No. You allege innocence on your part in spite of appearances which you admit are almost conclusive. You can hardly claim that more innocent appearances on her part prove that she is guilty. Besides, we don't want to stir up any more sediment. We'll do everything on the Q. T. Money talks, and the little lady is not deaf. My legal advice to you is, 'Don't fret,' and my medical advice is, 'Go to bed and stay there till I send you word that it's all over.' Remember one thing, there never was a storm so big that it didn't blow over.”
Charity was not in the least quieted. His sedative only annoyed her ragged nerves.
“Keep my name clean,” she whispered.
As she rode home in a taxicab that was like a refrigerator she passed in the Fifth Avenue mêlée Zada L'Etoile, now Mrs. Cheever, with the tiny little Cheever like a princelet asleep at her breast, hiding with its pink head the letter “A” that had grown there.
People of cautious respectability spoke to Zada now with amiable respect, and murmured:
“Funny thing! She's made a man of that good-for-nothing Peter Cheever. They're as happy and as thick as thieves.”