“But he has no bad points, my dear lady. Of course, during adolescence he has been virile and erratic and perhaps indulged himself in some few indiscretions common to all boys. Why, I have even passed through such a stage myself. But there’s nothing really bad about him—nothing but what a characterful wife could eventually eradicate.”
“Mr. Ruggles, has Gordon ever recounted how very ungentlemanly—in fact, grossly insulting—his conduct toward myself has been consistently—from the moment of our first meeting?”
Incredulity, a flick of exasperation, now passed over Amos Ruggles’s features. There was a certain trick of intonation in Madelaine’s voice which quashed irrevocably any argument that Gordon had not been ungentlemanly and insulting. And yet Amos was not quite willing to subscribe to that. And argument was cheapening.
“Just how has he acted—what has he done?”
“You really wish me to tell you?”
“I should consider it in the light of a very great favor, my dear lady.”
Madelaine considered. She leaned back in the chair and put two slender fingers of each hand at a temple, her dark eyes fixed appraisingly upon her foster-uncle.
Then she told him.
She began with Gordon’s conduct and language the day ten years before, when he had violated the privacy of her bedroom. That was insipid, however, beside the later indignities she had suffered. She gave a truthful account of each situation when he had taken her at a disadvantage, forced himself upon her, defiled her lips or tried to compromise her still more seriously. The night of the bogus auto accident became but an incident in that sordid recount. The most brazen piece of insult and effrontery had been a night in a Boston hotel when Gordon had followed her, secured a room next to her own and bought a mercenary night clerk to let him scratch the girl’s name from the register and substitute “Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Ruggles” instead. He then added the consecutive room numbers as a suite. Cheap witnesses had been procured to substantiate that Madelaine had apparently gone to Boston, met Gordon clandestinely and shared an apartment with him for a night. With his citadel of crazy folly thus garrisoned, the foster-nephew had brazenly offered the girl the alternative of marriage or exposure, and only an astute lawyer had contrived to squelch the scandal without publicity.
Amos was dumbfounded. She waited for him to comment. But he held his peace. Then Madelaine laughed good-naturedly.