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His mother had been writing him her discoveries that his father, in wretched health and goaded by physical torment to furious play at the green tables of "high finance," was losing steadily, swiftly, heavily. But Ross read her letters as indifferently as he read Theresa's appeals to him to come to Windrift. It took a telegram "Matters much worse than I thought.
Yes we're engaged, and will probably be married up here in the fall Windrift is simply divine then, you know. And I want you to be my 'best man. The others'll be Edna and Clarice and Leila and Annette and perhaps Jessie and Anita. We're to live in Chicago father will give us a house, I'm sure. And you must come to visit us "
"I thought I might as well send it, as you had told me everything was settled." "Oh all right no matter." He could break with Theresa whenever he wished. Perhaps he would not wish to break with her; perhaps, after a few days he would find that his feeling for Adelaide was in reality no stronger than he had thought it at Windrift, when Theresa was tempting him with her huge fortune.
He stopped at Chicago and sent word to Windrift that he was ill not seriously ill, but in such a state that he thought it best to take care of himself, with the wedding so near. Theresa was just as well pleased to have him away, as it gave her absolute freedom to plan and to superintend her triumph.
"I oh, you know I love you," was his answer in a deliberately careless tone. She laughed with an attempt at raillery. "You've been too long up at Windrift you've been seeing too much of Theresa Howland," said she, merely for something to say; for Theresa was neither clever nor pretty, and Del hadn't it in her to suspect him of being mercenary. He looked coldly at her.
"You're free," said she, and her manner so piqued him, that to nerve himself to persist he had to think hard on the magnificence of Windrift and the many Howland millions and the rumored Ranger will.
"How is Del?" he asked, and for an instant he looked embarrassed and curiously ashamed of himself. "Adelaide is very well," was her reply in a constrained voice. "I couldn't stay away any longer," said he. "It was tiresome up at Windrift."
Howland will give her Windrift. And her cousin that Mr. Fanning she married is connected with all the best families in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. They are at the top of our aristocracy." This recital was not to inform, but to inspire to remind him what a wise and brilliant move he had made in the game of life. And it had precisely the effect she intended.
As soon, however, as he was in the road up to the Bluffs, deserted at that hour, his body relaxed, his arms and hands dropped from the correct angle for driving, the reins lay loose upon the horse's back, and he gave himself to dejection. He had thought at Windrift that, once he was free from the engagement which was no longer to his interest, he would feel buoyant, elated.
Had she not herself created and fostered in him the nature that would welcome such stuff as a bat welcomes night? "I'm going back to Windrift to-morrow," he said, still sullen, but with the note of the quarrel-seeker gone from his voice. "When do you wish me to write to her?" "Whenever you like," he said. The defiance in his tone was for Adelaide.
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