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Updated: June 2, 2025
Kedzie had tried all day to get in touch with Strathdene. When she ran him down at length by telephone he was dismally dignified and terrifyingly patriotic. His poor country needed him and he must return. This meant that Kedzie would lose her first and doubtless her last chance at the marquisate. She pleaded for a conference. He assented eagerly, but the problem was where to confer.
Everything was complex beyond understanding for minds, but things were very simple for hearts; they had only to ache with sorrow or wrath. The Marchioness of Strathdene and her airy husband reached England without being submarined, and there, to her great surprise, Kedzie found a whole new universe of things not quite right.
Charity, noting that Kedzie had flitted straight to Strathdene and was trying to appease his cold rage, felt an envy of the prima donna, who was enabled to express her feelings at full lung power with the fortissimo reinforcement of several powerful musicians.
In some cases the husband is busy enough with his own affairs to let the lover trot alongside, like the third horse which the Greeks called the pareoros. But neither Jim nor Strathdene would be content with that sort of team-work, and Kedzie least of all.
She and Strathdene agreed that love would find the way, and Kedzie suggested that Jim would probably be decent enough to arrange the whole matter. He had an awfully clever lawyer, too. Strathdene had braved nearly every peril in life except marriage. He was determined to take a shy at that. He and Kedzie talked their honeymoon plans with the boyishness and girlishness of nineteen and sixteen.
She had time enough to tell her parents all there was to tell on the voyage, but she had no idea that her limousine was taking her to the very inn that Strathdene had lured her to on that night when he tested her worthiness of his respect. It had been dark on that occasion and she had been in such a chaos that she had paid no heed to the name of the place or the dark roads leading thither.
She did at last what Jim had done nothing. Jim's mother had heard of Vanderveer's disappearance from Kedzie's entourage and she had improved with hope. When she learned that Strathdene was apparently infatuated she grew worse and telegraphed Jim to ask for a leave of absence. She did not tell Kedzie of her telegram or of Jim's answer.
But how to shake it off was the problem. Kedzie had to cling to Strathdene with one hand while she tried to release herself from the Dyckmans with the other. She had a dreadful feeling that she might lose them both if she were not exceedingly careful and exceedingly lucky. Help came to her unexpectedly from Charity Coe, unexpectedly, though Charity was always helping Kedzie.
She smothered the Marquess's protests about the awkwardness, the ludicrousness of such a flight. "What will the waiter think?" he asked, being afraid of a waiter, though of no one else. Kedzie did not care what the waiter thought, so long as he did not know whom he thought it of. Strathdene gave the headwaiter a bill and followed Kedzie out. He was hungry, angry, and puzzled.
Finally he had gone to the Mexican Border for an indefinite stay, leaving her to her own devices and the devices of any man who came along. It was too much like leaving a diamond outdoors: it cheapened the diamond. But Strathdene ah, Strathdene! He turned blue at the mention of Kedzie's husband. When Jim came back from Texas and Kedzie had to be polite to him Strathdene almost had hydrophobia.
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