Jim and Charity were stupefied. There was a look on Kedzie's face that frightened him.

"She means business," he groaned.

Charity sighed: "Divorce! And me to be named!"

"She won't do that. She owes you everything."

"What an ideal chance to pay off the debt!"

"Don't you worry. I'll protect you," Jim insisted.

"How?" said Charity.

"I'll fight the case to the limit."

"Are you so eager to keep your wife?" said Charity.

"No. I never did love her. I'll never forgive her for this."

But he had not the courage to go and meet Kedzie and her mother and her father. They were an unconscionable time coming.

He did not know that Kedzie and Skip Magruder were renewing old acquaintance.

While he waited the full horror of his dilemma came over him. Kedzie would undoubtedly sue him for divorce. If he lost, Charity would be publicly disgraced. If he won, he would be tied to Kedzie for life.

CHAPTER VII

A quick temper is an excellent friend for bolstering up an ailing conscience, especially if itself is bolstered by an inability to see the point of view of the other party to a conflict.

Kedzie's wrath at Charity justified to Kedzie any cruelty, especially as Kedzie was all harrowed up by the fear of losing the Marquess of Strathdene. And Kedzie loved Strathdene as much as she could ever love anybody.

For one thing Strathdene was fiercely jealous of her--and the poor child had been simply famished for a little jealousy. Her first husband had hardly known what the word meant. Before their marriage Gilfoyle had permitted her to dance the Greek dances without paying her the compliment of a beating. After their marriage he had gone to Chicago to earn a living and left her alone in New York City where there were millions of rivals.

Her second husband had been very philosophical about her career and had taken the news of her previous marriage with disgusting stoicism.

Finally he had gone to the Mexican Border for an indefinite stay, leaving her to her own devices and the devices of any man who came along. It was too much like leaving a diamond outdoors: it cheapened the diamond.

But Strathdene--ah, Strathdene! He turned blue at the mention of Kedzie's husband. When Jim came back from Texas and Kedzie had to be polite to him Strathdene almost had hydrophobia. He accused Kedzie of actually welcoming Jim. He charged her with polyandry. He threatened to shoot her and her husband and himself. He comported himself unlike any traditional Englishman of literature. He was, in fact, himself and what he did was like him. He was a born aviator. His heart was used to racing at unheard-of speeds. He could sustain superhuman exaltations and depressions.

Being in love with him was like going up in an airship with him, which was one of Kedzie's ambitions for the future. She dreamed of a third honeymoon _in excelsis._

Strathdene told her that if she ever looked at another man after she married him he would take her up ten thousand feet in the clouds, set his airship on fire, and drop with her as one cinder into the ocean.

What handsomer tribute could any woman ask of a man? He was a lover worth fighting for.

But she had felt uncertain of winning him till that wonderful morning when Jim did not come back home. She woke up early all by herself and heard the valet answer Jim's call from Viewcrest.

She had made a friend of Dallam by her flirtation with the n.o.bility. The poor fellow had suffered tortures from the degradation of his master's alliance with a commoner like Kedzie until Kedzie developed her alliance with the Marquess. Then his valetic soul expanded again.

He looked upon her as his salvation.

Over the telephone she heard him now promising Jim that he would not tell Kedzie. If Jim's old valet, Jules, had not gone to France and his death he would have saved Jim from infernal distresses, but this subst.i.tute had a malignant interest in his master's confusion. Dallam proceeded forthwith to rap at Mrs. Dyckman's door and spoke through it, deferentially:

"Beg pardon, ma'am, but could I have a word?"

Kedzie wrapped herself in a bath-robe and opened the door a c.h.i.n.k to hear the rest of what she had heard in part. The valet had no collar on and his overnight beard not off, and he, too, was in a bath-robe. Man and mistress stood there like genius and madness, "and thin part.i.tions did their bounds divide."

"Very sorry to trouble you, ma'am," he said, "but I'm compelled to. The master has just telephoned me that his car broke down at the Viewcrest Inn out Tiverton way, and he wants his morning clothes, and also--if you'll pardon me, ma'am--he instructed me to send him a long motor-coat of yours and a large hat and your limousine. I was directed not to--ahem--to trouble you about it, ma'am, but I 'ardly dared."

He helped her out so perfectly that she had no need to say anything more than, "Quite right."

She was glad that the door screened her from observation, for she went through a crisis of emotions, wrath and disgust at Jim's perfidy _versus_ ecstasy and grat.i.tude to him for it.

She beat her breast with her hand as if to keep her trembling heart from turning a somersault into her mouth. Then she spoke with a calm that showed how far she had traveled in self-control.

"Very good. You were quite right. Call the chauffeur and tell him to bring round my closed car. Then send me my maid and have the cook get me some coffee. Then you may telephone my mother and father and ask them to come over at once. Please send my car for them. You might have coffee for them also. For we'll all be riding out to--did you say Viewcrest Inn?"

"Yes, ma'am. Very good, ma'am. Thank you!"

He went away thinking to himself. He thought in c.o.c.kney: "My Gawd! w'at a milit'ry genius! She dict.i.tes a horder loike a Proosian general. I'm beginnin' to fink she's gowing to do milord the mokkis prahd. There's no daht abaht it. Stroike me, if there is."

By the time Kedzie was dressed and coffeed her panicky father and mother were collected and fed, and she had selected her best motor-coat for the shroud of whatever woman it was at Viewcrest. She dared not dream it was Charity.

She had time enough to tell her parents all there was to tell on the voyage, but she had no idea that her limousine was taking her to the very inn that Strathdene had lured her to on that night when he tested her worthiness of his respect.

It had been dark on that occasion and she had been in such a chaos that she had paid no heed to the name of the place or the dark roads leading thither.

She almost swooned when she reached the Viewcrest Inn and found herself confronted by Skip Magruder. And so did Skip. He had not recognized the back of her head before, but her face smote him now. There was no escaping him. Her beauty was enriched by her costume and her mien was ripened by experience, but she was unforgetably herself. He was still a waiter, and the ap.r.o.n he had on and the napkin he clutched might have been the same one he had when she first saw him.

When he saw her now again he gasped the name he had known her by: "Anitar! Anitar Adair! Well, I'll be--"

Then his face darkened with the memory of disprized love. He recalled the cruel answer, "Nothing doing," that she had indorsed on the stage-door letter he sent her long ago.

But the military genius that had guided Kedzie this morning inspired her still. She was not going to lose her victory for any flank attack from an ally in ambush. She sent out a flag of truce.

"Why, Skip!" she cried. "Dear old Skip! I want you to meet my father and mother. Mr. Magruder was terribly kind to me when I was alone and friendless in New York."

Mrs. Thropp had outgrown waiters and even Adna regretted the reversion to Nimrim that led him to shake hands and say, "Please to meecher."

The stupefied proprietor of the inn was begging for explanations of this unheard-of colloquy, but Skip flicked him away with his napkin as if he were a bluebottle fly and motioned Kedzie to a corner of the office.

Kedzie explained, breathlessly:

"Skip, I'm in terrible trouble, and I'm so glad to find you here, for you never failed me. I was very rude to you when you sent me that note, but I--I was engaged to be married at the time and I didn't think it proper to see anybody. And--well, I'm getting my punishment now, for my husband is here with a strange woman--and--oh, it's terrible, Skip! My heart is broken, but you've got to help me. I know I can rely on you, can't I, dear old Skip?"

The girl was so efficient that she almost deserved her success. It cost her something, though, to beguile a waiter with intimate appeals that she might earn a t.i.tle. But then in time of war no ally is to be scorned and the lowliest recruit is worth enlisting. A Christian can piously engage a Turk to help him whip another Christian.

When Kedzie pulled out the tremolo stop and looked up, big-eyed, and pouted at him, Skip was hers.