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Updated: June 2, 2025
She ignored mademoiselle and her lover, whose bliss was in evidence on deck all day, and took possession of Mrs. Waldeaux, caring for her as tenderly as if she had been some poor wretch sentenced to death. "She has no intellect left except her ideas about George," she told herself, "and if he turns his back on her for life in this way She never was too sane!" shaking her head ominously.
He led her up to the chair. The girl's head was wrapped in a veil and turned from her. Mrs. Waldeaux held out her hands. "Lucy! Lucy Dunbar!" she heard herself say. "Mais non! Cest moi!" said a shrill voice, and Mlle. Arpent, turning her head lazily, looked at her, smiling. Clara Vance had her faults, but nobody could deny that, in this crisis, she acted with feeling and tact.
He looked at her, perplexed and waiting. But she said no more. "Well, I must go now. Good-night." "Good-night, George!" Her bright, smiling eyes followed him steadily, as he went out. Mrs. Waldeaux tapped at Clara's door that evening after they reached home. "I came to tell you that I shall leave London early in the morning," she said. "You will not wait to see George and his wife?"
The sunshine fell on the girl's grave, uplifted face, on the white walls, the blue stove, and the calm, watching Madonnas. Clara, as Mrs. Waldeaux had done, thought of a nun in her cell to whom love could only be a sacred dream. She smiled back at Lucy, bade her goodnight, and closed the door. "Like mine?" she said, as she went down the corridor. "Well, it is a comfortable, quiet life.
"I want to be Frances Waldeaux again. I'm sure I didn't know it was in me to do that thing." There was no answer. She was alone in the great space of sky and sea. The world was so big and empty, and she alone and degraded in it! "I never shall see George again. He will think of me only as the woman who killed his wife," she thought.
"The girl who writes came from Pond City. She was in the same atelier in Paris with George. She says: 'Your friends the Waldeaux have come to grief by a short cut. They flung money about for a few months as if they were backed by the Barings. The Barings might have given their suppers. As for their studio there was no untidier jumble of old armor and brasses and Spanish leather in Paris; and Mme.
"I might do so," said Miss Dunbar tranquilly. One morning in April Mrs. Waldeaux saw George coming up from the station. She ran to meet him. He was pale and breathless with excitement. "What is it? What has happened?" she cried. "Hush h! Come in. Shut the door. No one must hear. The Consolidated Companies have failed. They have robbed their depositors." "Well, George? What have we Oh, Lucy!"
There has been nothing of the kind since, until this fancy. It is passing off. Of course it is mortifying enough to think that such a poor creature as that could attract him for an hour." "I was to blame," Miss Vance said, with an effort. "I brought her in his way. But how was I to know that she was such a cat, and he such If he should marry her " Mrs. Waldeaux laughed angrily.
Waldeaux presently said good-by, and Clara went home with her to spend the night. Lucy was left alone upon the piazza. It was there that George Waldeaux saw her again. This had been the hardest day of his life. He rose that morning telling himself with an oath that he would earn the money to buy his own food or never eat again. His mother had sent him a cheque by post.
Waldeaux drew herself together and turned her eyes on her with sudden apprehension, as she would on a snapping dog. The woman's tones threatened attack. "To live in Paris, to work effectively, your son must have money. I brought him no dot, alas! Except" with a burlesque courtesy "my beauty and my blood. I must know how much money we shall have before I design the menage."
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