The news of her young husband's suicide reached Norah early in the morning. She had gambled and lost. The old adventurous life was in front of her again.
She took the buffets of fate with the stoicism of her kind and class. She had a comfortable little nest-egg put by which stood between her and present want. If only Jack had been less emotional, she would not have troubled him much, been content with quite a little. It is to be feared that, in her bitter disappointment, she felt a little sore against Jack for his moral cowardice in getting comfortably out of it himself, and leaving her in the lurch.
Anyway, she faced the situation with a courage that one could not refuse to admire. By two o'clock that same day the servants had been paid their wages, the keys of the furnished house handed over to the agent, and Mrs. Pomfret had departed for London.
Murchison could never forget that terrible time till something came that seemed to dwarf all other things. In August, nineteen hundred and fourteen, there burst the first storm of the war which shook the world to its centre. In the blood-soaked plains of France he forgot everything except his country.
Jack Pomfret and Norah Burton seemed dim memories in those strenuous times of the world's upheaval. And yet, when he had a moment's leisure to think of the past, he felt a savage longing to be even with that fair-faced, smiling adventuress who had driven his poor young friend to a suicide's grave.
CHAPTER VIII
It's a good proposition, old man. You couldn't employ a couple of hours better. I have been in London Society of all sorts for the best part of my life, and I tell you that Stella Keane is the most charming girl I have ever met."
The speaker was little Tommy Esmond, short, genial, and rotund of person. Tommy knew everybody who was anybody, and everybody knew the mercurial Tommy.