FullReads

Mrs. Stuart exactly comprehended this sly speech; she knew also that there was some truth in it.

“Say, Beatty, it’s so nice to have you here!” The old man raised himself and capered about like a gouty old house-dog.

He made the most of his illness, for he suspected that it was a condition of truce, not a bond of peace. While he was in bed Mrs. Stuart drove to the city each day and, with Spencer’s help, conducted business for long hours. She had had experience in managing large charities; she knew people, and when a tenant could pay, with a little effort, he found Madam more pitiless than the old shop-keeper. Every afternoon she would take her stenographer to Stuart’s room and consult with him.

“Ain’t she a wonder?” the old man would exclaim to Spencer, in new admiration for his wife. And Spencer, watching the stately, authoritative woman day after day as she worked quickly, exactly, with the repose and dignity of a perfect machine, shivered back an unwilling assent.

“She’s marvellous!”

All accidents played into the hands of this masterful woman. Her own presence in town kept her daughter at Winetka en evidence for Stuyvesant Wheelright and Mrs. Wheelright. For Mrs. Stuart had determined upon him as, on the whole, the most likely arrangement that she could make. He was American, but of the best, and Mrs. Stuart was wise enough to prefer the domestic aristocracy. So to her mind affairs were not going badly. The truce would conclude ultimately in a senile capitulation; meantime, she could advance money for the household in London.

When Stuart had been nursed back into comparative activity, the grand dinners began once more–a convenient rebuttal for all gossip. The usual lists of distinguished strangers, wandering English story-tellers in search of material for a new “shilling shocker,” artists suing to paint her or “Mademoiselle l’Inconnue,” crept from time to time into the genial social column of the newspaper.

Stuart spent the evenings in state on a couch at the head of the drawing- room, where he usually remained until the guests departed. In this way he got a few words with his wife before she sent him to bed. One night his enthusiasm over her bubbled out.

“You’re a great woman, Beatty!” She looked a little pale, but otherwise unworn by her laborious month. It was not blood that fed those even pulses.

“You will not need my help now. You can see to your business yourself,” she remarked.

“Say, Beatty, you won’t leave me again, will you!” he quavered, beseechingly. “I need you these last years; ‘twon’t be for long.”

“Oh, you are strong and quite well again,” she asserted, not unkindly.

“Will a hundred thousand do?” he pleaded. “Times are bad and ready money is scarce, as you know.”

“Sell the electric bonds,” she replied, sitting down, as if to settle the matter.

“Sell them bonds at fifty?” The old shop-keeper grew red in the face.

“What’s that!” she remarked, disdainfully. “What have I given?” Her husband said nothing. “As I told you when we first talked the matter over, I have done my part to the exact letter of the law. You admit I have been a good and faithful wife, don’t you? You know,” a note of passion crept into her colorless voice, “You know that there hasn’t been a suggestion of scandal with our home. I married you, young, beautiful, admired; I am handsome now.” She drew herself up disdainfully. “I have not wanted for opportunity, I think you might know; but not one man in all the world can boast I have dropped an eyelash for his words. Not one syllable of favor have I given any man but you. Am I not right?”

Stuart nodded.

“Then what do you haggle for over a few dollars? Have I ever given you reason to repent our arrangement? Have I not helped you in business, in social matters put you where you never could go by yourself? And do you think my price is high?”