28 chapters
4 hour read
Selected Chapters
28 chapters
I
I
Price Ruyler knew that many secrets had been inhumed by the earthquake and fire of San Francisco and wondered if his wife's had been one of them. After all, she had been born in this city of odd and whispered pasts, and there were moments when his silent mother-in-law suggested a past of her own. That there was a secret of some sort he had been progressively convinced for quite six months. Moreover, he felt equally sure that this impalpable gray cloud had not drifted even transiently between him
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II
II
The morning was Sunday and he sat in the large window of his library that overlooked the Bay of San Francisco. The house, which stood on one of the highest hills, he had bought and remodeled for his bride. The books that lined these walls had belonged to his Ruyler grandfather, bought in a day when business men had time to read and it was the fashion for a gentleman to cultivate the intellectual tracts of his brain. The portraits that hung above, against the dark paneling, were the work of his m
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
III
III
Life out here in California had been too hurried for more than fleeting moments of self-study, but on this idle Sunday morning Price Ruyler's perturbed mind wandered to that inner self of his to which he once had longed to give a freer expression. It was odd that the conservative training, the rigid traditions of his family, conventional, old-fashioned, Puritanical, as became the best stock of New York, a stock that in the Ruyler family had seemed to carry its own antidote for the poisons ever s
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IV
IV
But Price noted that now the girl's eyes were merely wistful, and once or twice he saw them fill with tears. As three of the dowagers merely sniffed when he sought possible information, he finally had recourse to the manager of the hotel, D.V. Bimmer. They were a Madame and Mademoiselle Delano from Rouen, and had been at the hotel for a fortnight, not seeming to mind its comparative emptiness, but enjoying the sea bathing and the drives. The girl rode, and went out every morning with a groom. "B
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
V
V
The wooing had been as headlong as his falling in love. Hélène Delano had a deep sweet voice, which completed the conquest during the hour they spent in the grounds under the shelter of a great palm, until hunted down by a horrified parent. Hélène talked frankly of her life. Her mother had been visiting relatives in a small New England town—Holbrook Centre, she believed it was called, but hard American names did not cling to her memory—she loved the soft Latin and Indian names in California—and
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
VI
VI
Hélène's social success was immediate and permanent. Californians rarely do things by halves. Society was no exception. She had "walked off" with the most desirable man in town, but they were good gamblers. When they lost they paid. She had married into "their set." They had accepted her. She was one of them. No secret order is more loyal to its initiates. During that first year and a half of ideal happiness Ruyler, in what leisure he could command, found Hélène's rapidly expanding mind as compa
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
VII
VII
Unless—but that was ridiculous! Impossible! He sprang to his feet, incredulous, disgusted at the mere thought. But why not? She was very young, and older and wiser women were afflicted with inconsistencies, little tenacious desires and vanities never quite to be grasped by the elemental male. He went over to a bookcase containing heavy works of reference and pressed his index finger into the molding. It swung outward, revealing the door of a safe. He manipulated the combination, took from a draw
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
Ruyler sighed as he heard his wife walk down the hall. There had been a time when she came running like a child at his summons, but in these days she walked with a leisurely dignity which to his possibly morbid ear betrayed a certain crab-like disposition in her little high heels to slip backward along the polished floor. She came in smiling, however, and kissed him quickly and warmly. Her extraordinary hair hung down in two long braids, their blue blackness undulating among the soft folds of he
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
On the following day Ruyler, who had looked upon the whirlwind of passion that had swept him into a romantic and unworldly marriage, as likely to remain the one brief drama of his prosaic business man's life, began dimly to apprehend that he was hovering on the edge of a sinister and complicated drama whose end he could as little foresee as he could escape from the hand of Fate that was pushing him inexorably forward. When Fate suddenly begins to take a dramatic interest in a man whose course ha
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II
II
But business was forgotten. He was as nearly in a state of panic as was possible for a man of his inheritance and ordered life. He belonged to that class of New Yorker that looked with cold disgust upon the women of commerce. So far as he knew he had never exchanged a word with one of them, and had often listened with impatience to the reminiscences of his San Francisco friends, now married and at least intermittently decent, of the famous ladies who once had reigned in the gay night life of San
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
III
III
It was time to dismiss speculation and proceed to action. He rang up detective headquarters and asked Jake Spaulding to come to him at once. Spaulding began: "But the matter ain't ripe yet, boss. Nothin' doin' last night—" But Ruyler cut him short. "Please come immediately—no, not here. Meet me at Long's." He left the building and walked rapidly to a well-known bar where estimable citizens, even when impervious to the seductions of cocktail and highball, often met in private soundproof rooms to
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
Ruyler had half promised to go to a dinner that night at the house of John Gwynne, whose wife would chaperon his wife afterward to the last of the Assembly dances. Gwynne was his English friend who had abandoned the ancient title inherited untimely when he was making a reputation in the House of Commons, and become an American citizen in California, where he had a large ranch originally the property of an American grandmother. His migration had been justified in his own eyes by his ready adaptat
1 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II
II
When he arrived at home he went directly to Hélène's room, but paused with his hand on the knob of the door. He heard his mother-in-law's voice and she was the last person he wished to meet until he was in a position to tell her to leave the country. He was turning away impatiently when Madame Delano lifted her hard incisive tones. "And you promised me!" she exclaimed passionately. "I trusted you, I never believed—" Price retreated hurriedly to his own room, and it was not until he had taken a c
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IV
IV
It was about halfway through dinner that the primitive man in him routed every variety of apprehension that had tormented him since two o'clock that afternoon. Trennahan, another distinguished New Yorker, who had made his home in California for many years, had taken in Mrs. Gwynne, and his Spanish California wife sat at the foot of the table with the host. Ford had been given a lively girl, Aileen Lawton, to dissipate the financial anxieties of the day, and, to Ruyler's satisfaction, Mrs. Thornt
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
"And you won't take me to the party?" Hélène pouted charmingly as her husband laid her pink taffeta wrap over her shoulders. "I thought you said you might make it, and it would be too delightful to dance with you once more." "I'm afraid not. The Australian mail came in just as business closed and it's on my mind. I want to go over it carefully before I dictate the answers in the morning, and that means two or three hours of hard work that will leave me pretty well fagged out. Mrs. Thornton has o
1 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II
II
He did go down to the office and glance through the Australian mail, but at a few moments before twelve he took a California Street car up to the Fairmont Hotel and went directly to the ballroom. Mrs. Thornton was standing just within the doorway, but came toward him with lifted eyebrows. "This is like old times," she said playfully. "I found less mail than I expected and thought I would come and have a dance with my wife." His eyes wandered over the large room, gayly decorated, and filled with
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
III
III
And in the corridor he saw his wife chatting gayly with a group of young friends. Her color was paler than usual, perhaps, but that was not uncommon at a party, and otherwise she was as unruffled, as normal in appearance and manner, as when they had parted at the Gwynnes'. Nevertheless, he went directly up to her, and as she gave a little cry of pleased surprise, he drew her hand through his arm. "Come!" he said imperiously. "You are to dance this with me. I broke away on purpose—" "But, darling
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
On the following day at six o'clock Ruyler went to Long's to meet Jake Spaulding. By a supreme effort of will he had put his private affairs out of his mind and concentrated on the business details which demanded the most highly trained of his faculties. But now he felt relaxed, almost languid, as he walked along Montgomery Street toward the rendezvous. He met no one he knew. The historic Montgomery Street, once the center of the city's life, was almost deserted, but half rebuilt. He could saunt
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
Hélène, as Ruyler had anticipated, refused positively to accept Mrs. Thornton's invitation. "Do you think I'd leave you—to come home to a dreary house every night? Even if I don't see much of you, at least you know I'm there; and that if you have an evening off you have only to say the word and I'll break any engagement—you have always known that!" Ruyler had not, but she looked so eager and sweet—she was lunching with him at the Palace Hotel on the day following his interview with Spaulding—tha
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
II
II
When they left the table and walked through the more luxurious part of the court, they saw Madame Delano alone and enthroned as usual in the largest but most upright of the armchairs. And as ever she watched under her fat drooping eyelids the passing throng of smartly dressed women, hurrying men, sauntering, staring tourists. Here and there under the palms sat small groups of men, leaning forward, talking in low earnest tones, their faces, whether of the keen, narrow, nervous, or of the fleshy,
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
III
III
In spite of his wise old French mother-in-law's insinuations, Ruyler felt lighter of heart as he left the hotel and walked toward his office than he had since Sunday. Of two things he was certain: there was no ugly understanding between the mother and daughter over that unspeakable past, and Madame Delano's new attitude toward her daughter was merely the result of an over-sophisticated mother's apprehensions: those of a woman who was looking in upon smart society for the first time and found it
1 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
He arrived at home on the following afternoon at six and was immediately rung up by Spaulding, who demanded an interview. It was not worth while going down town again, as Hélène was out and would no doubt return only in time to dress for dinner. They were to dine at half-past seven and go to the play afterward. He told Spaulding to take a taxi and come to the house. Nothing had occurred meanwhile to cause him anxiety. He had taken Hélène out to the Cliff House to dinner the night before, and aft
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
They had intended to go to the theater but Ruyler put her to bed at once. He offered to read to her, but she turned her back on him with cold disdain, and he went to the little invisible cupboard where she kept her own jewels and took out the heavy gold box which had been the wedding present of one of his California business friends who owned a quartz mine. "I shall put this in the safe," he said incisively, "for, while I admire your stanchness in friendship, even for such an unworthy object as
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
During the next few days Ruyler saw little of his wife. He was obliged to take two business trips out of town and as he could not return until ten o'clock at night he advised her to have company to dinner and take her guests to the play. But she preferred to dine with Polly Roberts and Aileen Lawton, and she spent her days for the most part at Burlingame, motoring down with one or more of her friends, or sent for by some enthusiastic girl admirer already established there for the summer. Ruyler
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
It was half-past eleven when Ruyler and Spaulding, masked and wearing colored silk dominoes, entered the great gates of the Thornton estate in San Mateo, the detective merely displaying something in his palm to the stern guardians that kept the county rabble at bay. The mob stood off rather grumblingly, for they would have liked to get closer to that gorgeous mass of light they could merely glimpse through the great oaks of the lower part of the estate, and to the music so seductive in the dista
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
They walked rapidly up the close avenue—planted far back in the Fifties by Ford Thornton's grandfather—the blaze of light at the end of the long perspective growing wider and wider. As they emerged they paused for a moment, dazzled by the scene. The original home of the Thorntons had been of ordinary American architecture and covered with ivy; it might have been transplanted from some old aristocratic village in the East. Flora Thornton had maintained that only one style of architecture was appr
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
I
I
Aileen had shrieked and fled. Ruyler stood in the room with the ruby in his open hand. He saw that Hélène was standing quite erect before him. She had made no attempt to leave the room, nor did she appear to be threatened with hysterics. He groped until he found the electric button. The room, as Ruyler had inferred, was Mrs. Thornton's winter boudoir, a gorgeous room of yellow brocade and oriental stuffs. "Will you sit down?" he asked. Hélène shook her head. She was very white and she looked as
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
There was silence for a moment and then Price said awkwardly: "It is a pity you haven't the chain or you could wear the ruby for the rest of the evening." She turned her eyes from the window and stared at him. "I have the chain—" She raised her hand to the tip of her bodice—"but—but—you can't mean—it isn't possible that you can forgive me." "I think I have taken very bad care of you. What are you, after all, but a brilliant child? I am thirty-three—" He suddenly tore off his domino with, a feeli
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter