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Updated: May 13, 2025
"You will tell her that her father is not dead. You" She interrupted. "Where is that philosophy which you preached to me, Mark Telford, when you said you were going to marry another woman and told me that we must part? Your child has no father. You shall not tell her. You will go away and never speak to her. Think of the situation. Spare her, if you do not spare me or your friend John Gladney."
Then she went on to tell him who Mildred's mother and father were, what were Telford's relations to John Gladney and of his search for Gladney's wife. "Now," she said, "you understand all. They must meet." "He does not know who she is?" "He does not. He only knows as yet that she is the daughter of Mrs. Gladney, who, he thinks, is a stranger to him." "You know his nature. What will he do?"
She recognized the writing as that of Mark Telford. His initials were in the corner. The envelope was addressed to John Earl Gladney at Trinity hospital, New York. She saw a strange tangle of events. John Earl Gladney was the name of the man who had married an actress called Ida Folger, and Ida Folger was the mother of Mark Telford's child!
She thought of the woman, Mrs. Gladney, who was coming; of his child, whom he did not recognize. She looked down toward the abbey. The girl was walking there between old Mr. Margrave and Baron. She had once hated both the woman and the child. She knew that to be true to her blood she ought to hate them always, but there crept into her heart now a strange feeling of pity for both.
He rode down toward the gate. He saw Mildred Margrave coming toward him. "Oh, Mr. Telford!" she said. "You forsook us to-day, which was unkind. Mamma says she has seen you, she tells me that you are a friend of my stepfather, Mr. Gladney. That's nice, for I like you ever so much, you know." She raised her warm, intelligent eyes to his.
Gladney had taken a sitting room in a house adjacent to the hotel and was probably there. He took the note and went to the place indicated, sent in the note and waited. When Mrs. Gladney received the note, she was arranging the few knick-knacks she had brought. She read the note hurriedly and clinched it in her hand. "It is his writing his, Mark Telford! He, my husband's friend! Good God!"
And remember in the future that you can't fool about the fire escapes of a thirteen story flat as you can a straight foothill of the Rockies or a Lake Superior silver mine. But take care of yourself, Gladney. You can't drown a mountain with the squirt of a rattlesnake's tooth; you can't flood a memory with cognac. I've tried it. For God's sake don't drink any more. What's the use?
Now for the commission you gave me. I'd rather it had been anything else, for I think I'm the last man in the world for duty where women are concerned. That reads queer, but you know what I mean. I mean that women puzzle me, and I'm apt to take them too literally. If I found your wife, and she wasn't as straightforward as you are, Jack Gladney, I'd as like as not get things in a tangle.
He did not seem excited or nervous. Once or twice he got up and walked back and forth, his eyes bent on the floor. He was making calculations regarding the company he had floated in London and certain other matters. When he had finished writing, three letters lay sealed and stamped upon the table. One was addressed to John Gladney, one to the Hudson Bay company and one to a solicitor in London.
How the medicine man took little bits of us and the red niggers, too, and put them on the raw place and fixed him up again? Well, that's the way to do it, and if you come up smiling every time you get your pound of flesh one way or another. Play the game with a clear head and a little insolence, Gladney, and you won't find the world so bad at its worst. "So much for so much.
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