"Beverley," she murmured, half brokenly, "remember that if I had any thought of punishment toward the woman who trifled with you and humbled you, it has been because I am your sister--because I was fond of you--because" ...

He interrupted her with a quick, waving gesture of the hand. "You talk insanely," he said. "She neither trifled with me nor humbled me. I was a fool even to tell you how sensibly she acted. What you call your fondness is nothing but your miserable pride. I see clearly that you have some detestable plan. Do you refuse to tell me what it is?--me, who have the right to learn it!"

Every trace of color had left her cheeks, and she was biting her lips.

There was very little of the great lady remaining in her mien or visage, now.

"You have twice spoken of your right," she faltered. "On what is such a right based? How can you possibly possess it? You are nothing to her.

You are neither her husband nor"--

"I am her lover," he broke in. "I am her lover, reverent, devout, loyal, and shall be while we both live! She is the most charming woman I have ever met. I met her too late, or she would be my wife now. It was not her fault that she refused me. She is not a bit to blame. Good Heavens!

have I the monstrous arrogance to a.s.sume that she should have married an old fossil like myself because I was of a little importance in the world? No, Cornelia, that preposterous a.s.sumption belongs to you. It is just like you. And you call it love--sisterly love. I call it the very apex of intolerable pride. But admit for the moment that it is I and not yourself whom you care for. Will you tell me, on that account, what it is you mean or meant to do?"

Before he had finished, Mrs. Van Horn had sunk into a chair and covered her face with both hands. Her sobs presently sounded, violent and rapid.

In these brief seconds she was shedding more tears than had left her cold eyes for many years past.

"I mean to do nothing--nothing!" she answered, with a gasp almost like that which leaves us when in straits for breath.

"Do you give me your sacred promise," he said, "that this is true?"

The words appeared to horrify her. She looked at him with streaming eyes, while a positive shudder shook her frame.

"Oh, Beverley, what degradation this seems to me! Degradation of _yourself_! You may call me as proud as you choose. It is no insult. It is a compliment, even. I am proud of _being_ proud. I had never given up hope that you would marry some woman of good birth, good antecedents, your equal and mine--young enough, too, to bear you children. I am childless, myself--how I would have loved your children! Their own mother would not have loved them more. Every penny of my large fortune should have gone to them. This has been my dream for years past, and now you shatter it by telling me that an upstart, a parvenu, a n.o.body from nowhere, holds you ensnared beyond escape!"

Thurston was not at all touched. This outburst, so uncharacteristic and so unexpected, did not bear for him a grain of pathos. He saw behind it nothing save an implacable selfishness that chose to misname itself affection. The ambition of Claire saddened him to contemplate; it had so rich a potentiality for its background. He was forever seeing the true and wise woman that she might have been. Even the nettles in her soil flourished with a certain beauty of their own, proving its fertile resources if more wholesome growths had taken root there. But in Cornelia Van Horn's nature all was barren and arid. The very genuineness of her present grief was its condemnation. Her tears were as chilly to him as the light of her bravest diamonds; they had something of the same hard sparkle; she wept them only from her brain, as it were; her heart did not know that she was shedding them.

"The bitter epithets which you apply to my _ensnarer_," he said, with a momentary curve of the lips too austere to be termed a smile, "make me the more suspicious that you harbor against her designs of practical spite. I want your promise that you will refrain from the least active injury--that you will never use the great social power you possess, either by speech or deed, to her disadvantage. Do you give me this promise, or do you refuse it? If the latter, everything is at an end between us. The monetary trusts you have consigned to me shall be at once transferred to whatever lawyer you may appoint as their recipient, and from to-night henceforward we meet as total strangers."

"A quarrel between you and me, Beverley!" said his sister, trying to choke back her sobs, and rising with a cobweb handkerchief pressed in fluttered alternation to either humid eye. "A family quarrel! And I have been so guarded--so careful that the world should hold us and our name in perfect esteem!--Oh, it is horrible!"

"I did not infer that it would be pleasant," he answered. "You yourself have power to avert or bring it about. All remains with yourself."

"I--I must make you a promise," she retorted, in what would have been, if louder, a peevish wail, "just as though I had really intended some--some gross, revengeful act! You--you are ungentlemanly to impose such a condition! You--you are out of your senses! That creature has bewitched you!"

He saw her eye, tearful though it was, quail before his own narrowed and penetrating look. He felt his suspicion strengthen within him.

"I do impose the condition," he said, perhaps more determinedly than he had yet spoken. "I do exact the promise. Now decide, Cornelia. There is no hard threat on my part, remember. You don't like the idea of an open rupture with me, you don't think it would be respectable; it would make a little mark on your ermine--a _defaut de la cuira.s.se_, so to speak.

But your beloved world would possibly side with you and against me; you would not lose a supporter; you would still remain quite the grand personage you are. Only, I should never darken your doors again; that is all. Come, now, be good enough to decide."

She sank into her seat once more; her eyes had drooped themselves; the tears were standing on her pale cheeks. "I did not know you had it in you to be so cruel," she said, uttering the words with apparent difficulty.

"I am afraid I always knew that you had it in you," he returned. "Come, if you please.... Your answer."

"You--you mean my promise?"

"Yes. Your faithful and solemn promise. We need not go over its substance again. If you break it after giving it I shall not reproach you; I shall simply act. You understand how; I have told you."

She was silent for some time. She had got her handkerchief so twisted between her fingers that they threatened to tear its frail fabric.

Without raising her eyes, and in a voice that was very sombre but had lost all trace of tremor, she at length murmured:--

"Well, I promise faithfully. I will do nothing--say nothing. My conduct shall be absolutely neutral--null. Are you satisfied?"

"Entirely," he said.

He at once left her. He reached the opera just as it was ending. Claire, in the company of two ladies and two gentlemen, and attended by Goldwin, was leaving her box when he contrived to find her. Hollister had purchased one of the larger proscenium boxes some time ago; he had given a great price for it to an owner who could not resist the princely terms offered.

"You are very late," Claire said, giving him her hand, while Goldwin, standing behind her, dropped a great fur-lined cloak over her shoulders, and hid the regal costliness of her dress, with its laces, flowers, and jewels. "Have you been dining with your sister all this time, or were you here for the last act, but talking with older friends elsewhere?"

"No," replied Thurston, who had already exchanged a nod of greeting with Goldwin. He lowered his voice so that Claire alone could hear it. "I arrived but a few minutes ago. I have been talking seriously with my sister. You were quite right. She has withdrawn her disapprobation. You have conquered her, as you conquer everybody."

He saw the faint yet meaning flash that left her dark-blue eyes, and he read clearly, too, the significance of her bright smile, as she said:--

"Ah, you rea.s.sure me. For I had my doubts; I confess it, now."

"So had I," he returned. "But they are at rest forever, as I want yours to be." ...

At an early hour, the next morning, Mrs. Van Horn surprised her friend and kinswoman, Mrs. Ridgeway Lee, in the latter's pretty and quaint _boudoir_, that was j.a.panese enough, as regarded hangings and adornments, to have been the sacred retreat of some almond-eyed Yeddo belle.

Mrs. Lee had had her coffee, and was deep in one of Zola's novels when her friend was announced. Her coupe would appear at twelve, and take her to a certain small religious hospital of which she was one of the most a.s.siduous patrons; but she always read Zola, or some author of a similar Gallic intensity, while she digested her coffee.

She had concealed the novel, however, by the time that Mrs. Van Horn had swept her draperies between the Oriental jars and screens.

"I have come to talk with you about that affair--that plan, Sylvia,"

said her visitor, dropping into a chair.

"You mean ... to-morrow, Cornelia?"

"Yes.... By the way, have you seen the morning papers?"

"I glanced over one of them--the 'Herald,' I think. It said, in the society column, that I wore magenta at the Charity Ball last night. As if I would disgrace myself with that hideous color! These monsters of the newspapers ought to be suppressed in some way."

"You didn't think so when they described your flame-colored plush gown so accurately last Tuesday. However, you deserve to be ridiculed for going to those vulgar public b.a.l.l.s."

"But this was for charity, and"--

"Yes, I know. Don't let us talk of it. If you had read the paper more closely you would have seen the statement, given with a great air of truth, that Herbert Hollister's millions are flowing away from him at a terrible rate, and that to-night may see him almost ruined."

"How dreadful!" said Mrs. Lee, in her slow way, but noticeably changing color.

Mrs. Van Horn gave a high, hard laugh. "Of course you are sorry."

"Sorry!" softly echoed Mrs. Lee, uncoiling herself from one peculiar pose on the yellow-and-black lounge where she was seated, and gently writhing into another. "Of course I am sorry, Cornelia. Although you must grant that _she_ merits it. To desert her poor, ignorant, miserable mother! To run away and leave her own flesh and blood in starvation!"

Here Mrs. Lee heaved an immense sigh. "Ah, Providence finds us all out, sooner or later! If that wicked woman's sin is punished by her husband's ruin, who shall say that she has not richly deserved it? But in spite of this, Cornelia dear, _our_ stroke of punishment will not be too severe.

With regard to my own share in our coming work, I feel that I am to be merely the instrument--the humble instrument--of Heavenly justice itself!"

"No doubt," replied Mrs. Van Horn, with frigid dryness. "But you must do it all alone to-morrow, Sylvia. I have come to tell you so. I can have no part whatever in the proceeding. However it is carried out--whether you bring Mrs. Hollister face to face with her plebeian parent or no, I shall be absent. It is true, I accepted for the lunch. But I shall be ill at the last moment. I withdraw from the whole ingenious plot. I shan't see the little _coup de theatre_ at all. I wish that I could. You know I have never forgiven the refusal of Beverley any more than you have forgiven ... well, something else, my dear Sylvia. But I must remain aloof; it is settled; there is no help for it."

Mrs. Lee opened her big black eyes very wide indeed. "Have you lost your senses, Cornelia?" she queried, with her grotesque, unfailing drawl.

"What! After my wonderful meeting with Mrs. Twining at the hospital!