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During the speechless misery of the first days Mrs. Waldeaux was conscious that George was hanging over her, tender as a mother with a baby. She commanded him to stay on deck, for each day she saw that he, too, grew more haggard. "Let me fight it out alone," she would beg of him. "My worst trouble is that I cannot take care of you."
Away with you, Babette!" as a pretty baby ran up to him. "You want to ride? That is impossible. Unless, indeed, madame desires it?" lifting the child to place her on the seat. Babette laughed and held out her hands. But Mrs. Waldeaux shrank back, shuddering. "Take her away," she whispered. "She must not touch me!" The mother seized the child, and the women all talked vehemently at once.
"It is a matter of indifference to me," she said, "what the people of New York think of Mr. Waldeaux." Clara looked at her quickly. "I do not quite catch your meaning?" she said. But Lucy filled her can, and forgot to answer. Clara had brought Miss Dunbar back and established her in her own house near Weir, under the care of a deaf widowed aunt.
Dunbar Place was a stately colonial house, set in a large demesne, and all Kent County waited breathless to know what revelations the heiress would make to it, in the way of equi-pages, marqueterie furniture, or Paris gowns. Mrs. Waldeaux found Lucy one day, a month after her arrival, seated at her sewing on the broad, rose-covered piazza, looking as if she never had left it.
There is no way of being rid of her?" "No, there is no way," said Waldeaux stoutly. "And if there were, I should not look for it. I am sorry that there is any smirch on Lisa's birth. But even her mother, I fancy, was not altogether a bad lot. Bygones must be bygones. I love my wife, mother. She's worth loving, as you'd find if you would take the trouble to know her.
She had marvellous beauty and a devilish disposition. She ran away, lived a wild life in Paris, and became the mistress of a Russian Grand Duke. Her death " He could not have told why he stopped. Mrs. Waldeaux still watched him, attentive, but the sympathetic smile had frozen into icy civility. She had the old-fashioned modesty of her generation.
A week ago Lisa could have trampled the life out of this woman who had slandered her dead mother, with the fury of any wild beast. For she was Pauline Felix's daughter. It was her mother's name that Mrs. Waldeaux had said could not be spoken by any decent woman.
Miss Vance was silent and thoughtful a moment. Then she came closer. "I will tell you where to find her," she said, in a low voice. "I have thought of it for a long time. It seems to me that Providence actually made Lucy Dunbar for George." "Really?" Mrs. Waldeaux drew her self up stiffly. "Wait, Frances. Lucy has been with me for three years. I know her.
When his Highness came back to them she rose hastily and went to her own room. Late that night Miss Vance found her there in the dark, sitting bolt upright in her chair, still robed in velvet and lace. Clara regarded her sternly, feeling that it was time to take her in hand. "You have not forgiven George?" she said abruptly. Mrs. Waldeaux looked up, but said nothing. "Is he coming back soon?"
"She has remarkable beauty, certainly; but there is something finical precise " "Take care. She will hear you," said George. "Beauty, eh? Oh, I don't know," indifferently. "She is passably pretty. I have never seen a woman yet whose beauty satisfied ME." Mrs. Waldeaux leaned back with a comfortable little laugh. "But you must not be so hard to please, my son.
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