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Kedzie was determined that he should live long enough for her to free herself from Jim and make the marquisate hers. She seemed to be succeeding. She found Strathdene as easy of fascination as her old movie audiences had been. He even tried to write poetry about her pout; but he was a better rider on an aeroplane than on Pegasus.
Her lawyer emphasized the heartbreak it was to her to learn that her adored husband had been led astray by her trusted friend. This did not make pleasant reading for the jealous Strathdene, and he wished himself jolly well out of the whole affair. It was not long before his own name began to slip into the case by innuendo.
She insisted so strongly that Kedzie did not dare refuse, though she had vowed never to step inside the grounds where she had made her Newport debut as a hired nymph. Charity tried to escape by alleging a journey to New York, but Mrs. Noxon browbeat her into staying. Charity did not know that Strathdene was invited till she saw him come in with the crowd. Neither did Kedzie. Old Mrs.
Strathdene also suddenly bolted, saying: "Sorry, but I've got to run myself into the hangar. My doctor says I'm not to do any night flying." And now Kedzie was marooned with Jim. She was in a panic about Strathdene; a fantastic jealousy assailed her. To the clandestine all things are clandestine! What if he were hurrying away to meet Charity?
She only knew that she did not make the money he promised to make for her. She said that war was terrible. A pious soul would have credited Providence with the rescue. But Providence had other plans. One of the victims of the U-53 was a young English aviator, the Marquess of Strathdene. If the U-53 had not sunk the ship that carried him Kedzie would have had an exceedingly different future.
Vernon Castle, the amiable revolutionist of the dance, and many and many another eagle heart. Strathdene scouted valuably during the first battle of the Somme, his companion working the gun or the camera or the bomb-dropping lever as the need might be. And then one day a burst of shrapnel from the remote earth shattered his plane and him.
A purer patriot or a warrior more free of any taint of caution than Strathdene could not be imagined, but otherwise he was as arrant a scamp as ever. While he waited for strength to "carry on" in the brave, new, English sense, it amused him to "carry on" in the mischievous old American sense.
Of course Charity had no proof that Kedzie had been more than brazenly indiscreet with Strathdene, but that very indifference to gossip, that willingness to stir up slander, seemed so odious that nothing could be more odious, not even the actual crime.
And that was where it took them. Once the battle was joined, a fierce desire for haste impelled all of these people. Kedzie dreaded every hour's delay as a new risk of losing Strathdene, who was showing an increasing rage at having the name of his wife-to-be bandied about in the press, with her portraits in formal pose or snapped by batteries of reporters.
Besides, Charity found it hard to assume that a woman who held her good name cheap would hold her good self less cheap, since reputation is usually cherished longer than character. In any case, Charity was smothering. Even Mrs. Noxon's vast drawing-room was too small to hold her and Jim and Kedzie and Strathdene. America was too strait to accommodate that jangling quartet.
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