"What will people say?" he sneered. "Is that all you can think of? Why, that has become your religion, Persis. You can stand the lying--the sneaking--the treachery--can't you? You've courage enough for the crimes, but when it comes to consequences, you're a coward, eh? But I'm not afraid of the consequences. I'm afraid of the crimes. I'm not afraid of the gossips, but of giving them cause. I offered you protection, devotion. I wanted to rescue our honor. But you--what do you care for me--for love--for honor? You care only for yourself and for what people will say--well, you'll soon know. But I won't help you to ruin your life. I won't let you ruin mine. I'm sorry I ever saw you. Before G.o.d, I'll never see you again!"

He turned to go. A cry of anguish broke from her. She rushed in pursuit of him, flung her arms about him, sobbing: "No, no, I won't let you!

You've no right to leave me. I've given up everything for you. I've been everything to you. You can't leave me! Don't, don't, don't!"

He was too deeply embittered to have mercy. Her panic only angered him the more. He ripped her hands from his shoulders, jeering at her: "Agh, you're faithless to your duty to your husband, faithless to your love of me, faithless to everybody--everything."

"Don't say that, Harvey," she pleaded, brokenly. "Take that back."

"You've killed my trust," he raged. "You've killed my love. I hate the sight of you."

She put her hand over his cruel mouth to silence it. "Don't let me hear that from you--pity me, pity me!"

He tried to break her intolerable clasp, but she fought back to him.

Abruptly she ceased to resist. She just stared past him. Startled, he looked where she stared. She whispered:

"Some one is behind that curtain--listening!"

The curtain trembled, and she gasped again: "Look!"

A shudder of uneasiness shook him, but he muttered: "It's only a draught from somewhere."

"Perhaps it is," she answered, weakly. "I feel all cold." And then she stared again and whispered: "No! See! There's a hand there in the curtain!"

And Forbes could descry the m.u.f.fled outlines of fingers clutching the heavy fabric. He hesitated a moment, then he moved forward.

She put out her arm and stayed him, and spoke with abrupt self-possession. "No, it is my place." Then she called, hoa.r.s.ely: "Crofts, is that you? Crofts!" There was no answer, but the talons seemed to grip the shivering arras tighter. She called again: "Nichette!

Dobbs! Who's there?"

There was no answer.

"It's none of the servants," she whispered. Then, after a pause of tremulous hesitation, she strode to the curtain and hurled it back with a clash of rings. It disclosed Willie Enslee cowering in ambush. He held a silver-handled revolver in his hand.

CHAPTER LXVI

A little groan of dismay broke from Persis' lips as she rushed between Forbes and the danger, interposing her body to protect his. Forbes seized her and thrust her away and leaped toward Enslee.

But Enslee darted aside and, running behind a great carved table, covered Forbes with the revolver, and cried, in a quivering voice, "Don't you move or I'll fire!"

Forbes smiled grimly at the plight, and spoke with the calm of the doomed. "All right, if you want to. It's your privilege. But I wouldn't if I were you. In the first place, I'm sure you'd miss; you don't hold your revolver like a marksman."

"The first shot might miss," Enslee admitted; "but there are five others."

"You'd never pull the trigger a second time," said Forbes, icily. "And there's not one chance in a thousand of that toy stopping me. I've got two bullets in me now--from real guns. And I'm not dead yet. If you should wing me, though, I'm afraid you'd never shoot a second time, for I'd have you by the wrist and by the throat--and I'd strangle you to death before I realized what I was doing."

Enslee quaked with terror, less of Forbes than of his own fatal opportunities and his own weapon; Forbes began to edge imperceptibly closer and closer as he reasoned with the wretch, who, having lost the momentum of his frenzy, was a prey to reason.

"After all, what good would it do to shed a lot of blood?" Forbes urged, gently, as to a child. "It would only publish your disgrace. Besides, people don't indulge in pistol-play any more. It's out of style, man.

That ought to appeal to you, if nothing else will. And then it's so unjust. Why kill a man because your wife preferred him to you? It's a free country, isn't it? What does a man want with a wife who doesn't want him? The days of slavery are over, aren't they? If she doesn't love you enough to--" There was such a pitiful sag of Enslee's head at this stab that Forbes spared him more, and went on soothingly: "Better let this whole affair just drop. I was going away. She wouldn't go with me.

She didn't love me enough, either. She preferred to stay with you. I'll never see her again. I promise that."

He put his right hand out appealingly. "Come, let's make the best of it and cheat the gossips."

One quick motion and he had struck Enslee's wrist aside and down, and clamped it to the table with his left hand. It was hardly necessary to press his thumb between Enslee's knuckles to force his inert fingers open. Forbes picked up the revolver, pressed the catch to the safety, and dropped it into his pocket. Then he breathed a deep sigh, less of relief than regret, and turned to go. He almost stumbled over the body of Persis. She had swooned to the floor when he thrust her off, and had lain unnoticed while the males fought through their feud on her account.

Forbes stared down at her. Shame and anger had so burned him out that he had no love left for her and no mercy. She seemed an utter stranger to him. He did not even stoop and lift her to a chair. He shook his head, smiled bitterly, and went out.

Enslee hung across the table in a stupor of imbecility. The noise of the outer door, as Forbes closed it, shocked him back to life. He peered about the room and understood. He dropped into a chair and hid his face in his hands.

By and by Persis gradually returned to consciousness. She rose to her elbow in a daze, striving to collect her senses. With a sudden start she recalled everything, got to her knees, and hobbled with all awkwardness toward Enslee, whispering, haggardly: "Have you killed him? Where is he?"

"Gone!"

"Gone! No, no! No, no!" She raised herself to her feet to set out in pursuit of him, but just as she reached the door she was confronted by Crofts, who bowed once and walked away.

Persis' training and her heart fought a duel in her quivering frame.

Then she gained her self-control, turned to Willie, and murmured:

"Dinner."

The marvelously inappropriate word sent through him a shudder of nausea.

Persis appealed to his other self. "Must we take the servants into our confidence?"

"I think you may trust my breeding," he answered, frigidly. He stalked woodenly to the door, held back the curtain, and bowed with mechanical gallantry.

"Thank you!" she sighed. She wavered a moment and clutched at her throat. Then she flung her head high in that thoroughbred way of hers and walked steadily from the room.

And Willie followed in excellent form.

CHAPTER LXVII

In the famous Enslee dining-room, where brilliant companies had gathered for a generation, giving and taking distinctions, and where Persis in her brief reign had mustered cohorts of pleasure that outgleamed them all, only two chairs were drawn up to the table; and that was contracted to its smallest circle. All the other chairs were aligned along the white marble walls with a solemn look as of envious, uninvited ghosts sitting with hands on knees and brooding. The walls were broken with dark columns like giant servants, and between them hung tapestries as big as sails. The tapestries told in a woven serial the story of "Tristram and La Beale Isoud."

Only three servants waited now: Roake and Chedsey--in the somber Enslee livery, whispering together as they straightened a rose stem or balanced a group of silver--and Crofts, eternally bent in an att.i.tude of deference, standing near the door--the great golden portal ripped from the Spanish castle of one of the senior Mrs. Enslee's ancestors.

For all their listening the servants had been unable to learn the details of the immediate wrangle, though they knew that war was in the air.

Crofts had kept them at their tasks and at a distance, and Crofts either had not heard or would not have told if one of them had presumed to ask him.

He had lived through so many family tragedies that he rather celebrated in his heart a day of good spirits than remarked a period of stress. And of all times, he felt, a good servant shows his quality best when the atmosphere is sultry with quarrel and a precarious truce is declared in the dining-room. To Crofts that was a temple for peace and perfect ceremony. There flourished the genius for self-effacement and the invisible, inaudible provision of whatever might be needed, that made service a high art, a priesthood.