Wallingford swelled up with righteous indignation.

"Vittoreo Matteo," he charged, "you are a rascally scoundrel! I met you in New York and you imposed upon me with a miserable pack of lies.

I have investigated and I find that there is no Etrusca, near Milan, Italy, no Etruscan black pottery, no Vittoreo Matteo. You induced me to waste a lot of money in locating and developing a black mud-swamp.

When you had gained my full confidence you came to me in Blakeville with a c.o.c.k-and-bull story that your mother was dying in Genoa, and on the strength of that borrowed a large sum of money from me. You are gone--I don't know where. I shall have to make a clean breast of this matter to Jonas Bubble, and tell him that if I can not pay that note when it falls due he will have to foreclose. You heartless villain!

Waiter, ice us another bottle of that ninety-three."

When Wallingford returned to his wife he found her very thoughtful.

"When are we going to Blakeville, Jim?" she asked.

He studied her curiously for a moment. She would have to know him some time or other. He had hoped to put it off while they were leading this unruffled existence, but now that the test had come he might as well have it over with.

"I'm not going back," he declared. "I'm through with Blakeville.

Aren't you?"

"Yes," she admitted, pondering it slowly. "I could be happy here always, or, if not here, wherever you are. But your business back there, Jim?"

He chuckled.

"I have no business there," he told her. "My business is concluded. I borrowed forty-five thousand dollars on that forty acres of sticky mud, and I think I'll just let the bank foreclose."

She looked at him a moment, dry-eyed and dry-lipped.

"You're joking," she protested, in a low voice.

"Not at all," he seriously a.s.sured her.

They looked at each other steadily for some moments, and gradually Wallingford saw beneath those eyes a spirit that he might conquer, but, having conquered, would always regret.

"It's--it's a swindle!" she gasped, as the true situation began to dawn upon her. "You don't mean, Jim, that you are a swindler!"

"No, I wouldn't call it that," he objected, considering the matter carefully. "It is only rather a shrewd deal in the game of business.

The law can't touch me for it unless they should chase down Vittoreo Matteo and find him to be a fraud, _and prove that I knew it_!"

She was thoughtful a long time, following the intricate pattern of the rug in their sitting-room with the toe of her neatly-shod foot. She was perfectly calm, and he drew a sharp breath of relief. He had expected a scene when this revelation should come; he was more than pleased to find that she was not of the cla.s.s which makes scenes.

Presently she looked up.

"Have you thought of what light this puts me in at home? Have you thought how I should be regarded in the only world I have ever known?

Why, there are a thousand people back in Blakeville who know me, and even if I were never to meet one of them again--Jim, it mustn't be!

You must not destroy my self-respect for ever. Have you spent any of that money?"

"Well, no," he reluctantly replied. "I have plenty of money besides that."

"Good!" said she with a gasp of relief. "Write father that, as you will be unable to carry out your projects, you are sending him the money to take up that note."

Wallingford was silent a long time. Wonderful the influence this girl had over him. He was amazed at himself.

"I can't remember when I ever gave up any money," he finally said, with an attempt at lightness; "but, Fannie, I think I'll do it just this once--for you--as a wedding present."

"You'll do it right away, won't you?"

"Right this minute."

He walked over and stooped down to kiss her. She held up her lips submissively, but they were cold, and there was no answering pressure in them. Silently he took his hat and started down-stairs.

"By the way," he said, turning at the door, "I'm going to make your father a present of that bay team."

He scarcely understood himself as he dictated to the public stenographer a letter to Jonas Bubble, so far different from the one he had planned to write. It was not like him to do this utterly foolish thing, and yet, somehow, he felt that he could not do otherwise. When he came back up-stairs again, the letter written and a check inclosed in it and the whole mailed, he found her in the same chair, but now she was crying. He approached her hesitantly and stood looking down at her for a long, long time. It was, perhaps, but one minute, but it seemed much longer. Now was the supreme test, the moment that should influence all their future lives, and he dreaded to dissolve that uncertainty.

He knelt beside her and put his arm about her. Still crying, she turned to him, threw both arms around his neck and buried her head on his shoulder--and as she cried she pressed him more tightly to her!

CHAPTER XXIV

CASTING ABOUT FOR A STRAIGHT BUSINESS, PATENT MEDICINE PROVIDES THE ANSWER

That was a glorious honeymoon! They traveled from one gay summer resort to another, and when Fannie expressed the first hint of fatigue, Wallingford, who had grown to worship her, promptly provided her with complete and unique rest, by taking her to some one of the smaller inland cities of the type which he loved, installing her in a comfortable hotel, and living, for a week or so, a quiet, lazy existence consisting largely of mere eating and sleeping, and just enough exercise to keep in good health. In all this time there was not one jarring thought, one troubled moment, nor one hint of a shadow. J.

Rufus took his wife into all sorts of unique experiences, full of life and color and novelty, having a huge pride in her constant wonder and surprise.

It happened, while upon one of these resting sojourns, that they one night paused on the edge of a crowd which stood gaping at a patent medicine faker. Suddenly recognizing an old acquaintance in the picturesque orator with the sombrero and the shoulder-length gray hair, Wallingford drew closer.

Standing behind the "doctor," upon the seat of his carriage where the yellow light of a gasolene torch flared full upon it, was a gaudy, life-size anatomical chart, and with this as bait for his moths he was extolling the virtues of Quagg's Peerless Sciatacata.

"Here, my friends," he declared, unfolding one of the many hinged flaps of the gory chart, "you _bee_-hold the intimate relation of the stomach with all the _inn_-ternal organs, and above all with the blood, which, pumped by the heart through these _abb_-sorbing membranes, takes up that priceless tonic, Doctor Quagg's Peerless Sciatacata. This, acting _dii_-rectly upon the red corpuscles of the vital fluid, _stimm_-ulates the circulation and carries its germ-destroying properties to every atom of the human frame, casting off _imm_-purities, _clean_-sing the syst-_em_, bringing _ee_-lasticity to the footsteps, hope to the heart, the ruddy glow of bounding health to pale cheeks, and the sparkle of new life to tired and jaded eyes!"

Wallingford turned to his wife with a chuckle,

"Just stand here a minute, Fannie," said he. "I must wade in and speak to the old scout. We stopped a week at the same hotel over in New Jersey and got as chummy as two cell-mates."

Fannie smiled doubtfully in response, and watched her husband with a slight trace of concern as he forced his way through the crowd and up to the wheel of the carriage.

"How are you, Doctor?" said he, holding up his plump palm. "Where are you stopping?"

The doctor's wink at J. Rufus was scarcely perceptible to that large young gentleman himself, much less to the bystanders, as with professional gravity he reached down for a hearty handshake.

"Benson House. Come around and see me to-morrow morning." Then, with added gravity and in a louder voice: "I scarcely knew you, friend, you are so changed. How many bottles of the Sciatacata was it you took?"

"Four," replied J. Rufus clearly, with not even a twinkle in his eye.

"Only four bottles," declaimed Doctor Quagg. "My friends, this is one of my most marvelous cures. When I met this gentleman in Columbus, Ohio, he was a living skeleton, having suffered for years from sciatic rheumatism. He bought from me one night at my carriage, just as he is standing now, six bottles of the Peerless Sciatacata. He took but four bottles, and look at him to-day!"

With one accord they looked. There was some slight t.i.ttering among them at first, but the dignity and gravity with which the towering J.

Rufus, hale and hearty and in the pink of condition, withstood that inspection, checked all inclination to levity. Moreover, he was entirely too prosperous-looking to be a "capper."

"I owe you my life, Doctor," said Wallingford gratefully. "I never travel without those other two bottles of the Sciatacata," and with the air of a debt of honor paid, he pressed back through the crowd to the sidewalk.