But in a moment his head popped up again fiercely.

"Confound you!" he muttered. "You can and you will. You've got to.

You've made your bed. Now lie on it." And he opened the letter.

"I can't tell you," wrote the girl, "how your letter touched me. Don't think I don't understand that it isn't because you love me or really want to marry me that you are asking me to do it. It is all the finer and more wonderful because you don't and couldn't, ever. You had nothing to gain--everything to lose. Yet you offered it all as if it were the most ordinary gift in the world instead of the biggest.

"Of course, I can't let you sacrifice yourself like that for me. Did you really think I would? I wouldn't let you be dragged down into my life even if you loved me which you don't. Some day you will want to marry a girl--not somebody like me--but your own kind and you can go to her clean because you never hurt me, never did me anything but good ever. You lifted me up always. But there must have been something still stronger that pulled me down. I couldn't stay up. I was never your kind though I loved you just as much as if I were. Forgive my saying it just this once.

It will be the last time. This is really good-by. Thank you over and over for everything,

"Madeline."

A mist blurred Ted Holiday's eyes as he finished the letter. He was free.

The black winged vulture thing which had hovered over him for days was gone. By and by he would be thankful for his deliverance but just now there was room only in his chivalrous boy's heart for one overmastering emotion, pity for the girl and her needlessly wrecked life. What a hopeless mess the whole thing was! And what could he do to help her since she would not take what he had offered in all sincerity? He must think out a way somehow.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE PEDIGREE OF PEARLS

"Where is Larry?" asked Doctor Holiday a few days later coming into the dining room at supper time. "I haven't seen him all the afternoon."

Margery dropped into her chair with a tired little sigh.

"There is a note from him at your place. I think he has gone out of town.

John told me he took him to the three ten train."

"H--m!" mused the doctor. "Where is Ruth?" he looked up to ask.

"Ruth went to Boston at noon. At least so Bertha tells me." Bertha was the maid. "She did not say good-by to me. I thought possibly she had to you!"

Her husband shook his head, perplexed and troubled.

"Dear Uncle Phil," ran Larry's message.

"Ruth has gone to Boston. She left a letter for me saying good-by and asking me to say good-by to the rest of you for her. Said she would write as soon as she had an address and that no one was to worry about her. She would be quite all right and thought it was best not to bother us by telling us about her plans until she was settled."

"Of course I am going after her. I don't know where she is but I'll find her. I've got to, especially as I was the one who drove her away. I broke my promise to you. I did make love to her and asked her to marry me the night Granny died. She said she would and then of course I said she couldn't and we've not seen each other alone since so I don't know what she thinks now. I don't know anything except that I'm half crazy."

"I know it is horribly selfish to go off and leave you like this when you need me especially. Please forgive me. I'll be back as soon as I can or send Ruth or we'll both come. And don't worry. I'm not going to do anything rash or wrong or anything that will hurt you or Ruth. I am sorry about the other night. I didn't mean to smash up like that."

The doctor handed the letter over to his wife.

"Why didn't he wait until he had her address? How can he possibly find her in a city like Boston with not the slightest thing to go on?"

Doctor Holiday smiled wearily.

"Wait! Do you see Larry waiting when Ruth is out of his sight? My dear, don't you know Larry is the maddest of the three when he gets under way?"

"The maddest and the finest. Don't worry, Phil. He is all right. He won't do anything rash just as he tells you."

"You can't trust a man in love, especially a young idiot who waited a full quarter century to get the disease for the first time. But you are right. I'd trust him anywhere, more rather than less because of that confession of his. I've wondered that he didn't break his promise long before this. He is only human and his restraint has been pretty nearly super-human. I don't believe he would have smashed up now as he calls it if his nerves hadn't been strained about to the limit by taking all the responsibility for Granny at the end. It was terrible for the poor lad."

"It was terrible for you too, Phil. Larry isn't the only one who has suffered. I do wish those foolish youngsters could have waited a little and not thrown a new anxiety on you just now. But I suppose we can't blame them under the circ.u.mstances. Isn't it strange, dear? Except for the children sleeping up in the nursery you and I are absolutely alone for the first time since I came to the House on the Hill."

He nodded a little sadly. His father was gone long since and now Granny too. And Ned's children were all grown up, would perhaps none of them ever come again in the old way. Their wings were strong enough now to make strange flights.

"We've filled your life rather full, Margery mine," he said. "I hope there are easier days ahead."

"I don't want any happier ones," said Margery as she slipped her hand into his.

The next few days were a perfect nightmare to Larry. Naturally he found no trace of Ruth, did not know indeed under what name she had chosen to go. The city had swallowed her up and the saddest part of it was she had wanted to be swallowed, to get away from himself. She had gone for his sake he knew, because he had told her he could endure things no longer.

She had taken him at his word and vanished utterly. For all her gentleness and docility Ruth had tremendous fort.i.tude. She had taken this hard, rash step alone in the dark for love's sake, just as she was ready that unforgettable night to take that rasher step with him to marriage or something less than marriage had he permitted it. She would have preferred to marry him, not to bother with abstractions of right and wrong, to take happiness as it offered but since he would not have it so she had lost herself.

Despair, remorse, anxiety, loneliness held him-in thrall while he roamed the streets of the old city, almost hopeless now of finding her but still doggedly persistent in his search. Another man under such a strain of mind and body would have gone on a stupendous thought drowning carouse.

Larry Holiday had no such refuge in his misery. He took it straight without recourse to anaesthetic of any sort. And on the fourth day when he had been about to give up in defeat and go home to the Hill to wait for word of Ruth a crack of light dawned.

Chancing to be strolling absent mindedly across the Gardens he ran into a college cla.s.smate of his, one Gary Eldridge, who shook his hand with crushing grip and announced that it was a funny thing Larry's bobbing up like that because he had been hearing the latter's name pretty consecutively all the previous afternoon on the lips of the daintiest little blonde beauty it had been his luck to behold in many a moon, a regular Greuze girl in fact, eyes and all.

Naturally there was no escape for Eldridge after that. Larry Holiday grabbed him firmly and demanded to know if he had seen Ruth Annersley and if he had and knew where she was to tell him everything quick. It was important.

Considering Larry Holiday's haggard face and tense voice Eldridge admitted the importance and spun his yarn. No, he did not know where Ruth Annersley was nor if the Greuze girl was Ruth Annersley at all. He did know the person he meant was in the possession of the famous Farringdon pearls, a fact immensely interesting to Fitch and Larrabee, the jewelers in whose employ he was.

"Your Ruth Annersley or Farringdon or whoever she is brought the pearls in to our place yesterday to have them appraised. You can bet we sat up and took notice. We didn't know they had left Australia but here they were right under our noses absolutely unmistakable, one of the finest sets of matched pearls in the world. You Holidays are so hanged smart. I wonder it didn't occur to you to bring 'em to us anyway. We're the boys that can tell you who's who in the lapidary world. Pearls have pedigrees, my dear fellow, quite as faithfully recorded as those of prize pigs."

Larry thumped his cranium disgustedly. It did seem ridiculous now that the very simple expedient of going to the master jewelers for information had not struck any of them. But it hadn't and that was the end of it. He made Eldridge sit down in the Gardens then and there however to tell him all he knew about the pearls but first and most important did the other have any idea where the owner of the pearls was? He had none. The girl was coming in again in a few days to hear the result of a cable they had sent to Australia where the pearls had been the last Larrabee and Fitch knew. She had left no address. Eldridge rather thought she hadn't cared to be found. Larry bit his lip at that and groaned inwardly. He too was afraid it was only too true, and it was all his fault.

This was the story of the pearls as his friend briefly outlined it for Larry Holiday's benefit. The Farringdon pearls had originally belonged to a Lady Jane Farringdon of Farringdon Court, England. They had been the gift of a rejected lover who had gone to Africa to drown his disappointment and had died there after having sent the pearls home to the woman he had loved fruitlessly and who was by this time the wife of another man, her distant cousin Sir James Farringdon. At her death Lady Jane had given the pearls to her oldest son for his bride when he should have one. He too had died however before he had attained to the bride.

The pearls went to his younger brother Roderick a sheep raiser in Australia who had ama.s.sed a fortune and discarded the t.i.tle. The sheep raiser married an Australian girl and gave her the pearls. They had two children, a girl and a boy. Roderick was since deceased. Possibly his wife also was dead. They had cabled to find out details. But it looked as if the little blonde lady who possessed the pearls although she did not know where she got them was in all probability the daughter of Roderick Farringdon, the granddaughter of the famous beauty, Lady Jane. She was probably also a great heiress. The sheep raiser and his father-in-law had both been reported to be wallowing in money. "Oh boy!" Eldridge had ended significantly.

"But if Ruth is a person of so much importance why did they let her travel so far alone with those valuable pearls in her possession? Why haven't they looked her up? I suppose she told you about the wreck and--the rest of it?"

"She did, sang the praises of the family of Holiday in a thousand keys.

Your advertis.e.m.e.nts were all on the Annersley track you see and they would all be out on the Farringdon one. The paths didn't happen to cross I suppose."

"You don't know anything about, Geoffrey Annersley do you?" Larry asked anxiously.

"Not a thing. We are jewelers not detectives or clairvoyants. It is only the pearls we are up on and we've evidently slipped a cog on them. We should have known when they came to the States but we didn't."

"I'll cable the American consul at Australia myself. It's the first real clue we have had--the rest has been working in the dark. The first thing though is to find Ruth." And Larry Holiday looked so very determined and capable of doing anything he set out to do that Gary Eldridge grinned a little.

"Wonderful what falling in love will do for a chap," he reflected. "Used to think old Larry was rather a slow poke but he seems to have developed into some whirlwind. Don't wonder considering what a little peach the girl is. Hope the good Lord has seen fit to recall Geoffrey Annersley to his heaven if he really did marry her."

Aloud he promised to telephone Larry the moment the owner of the pearls crossed the threshold of Larrabee and Fitch and to hold her by main force if necessary until Larry could get there. In the meantime he suggested that she had seemed awfully interested in the Australia part of the story and it was very possible she had gone to the--

"Library." Larry took the words out of his mouth and bolted without any formality of farewell into the nearest subway entrance.