Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER XII

CONFESSED TREACHERY

On the evening of the expected call of J. Percival Dunbar, Mrs. Hilary Stanford dawdled over her dinner, a meal already delayed in its service by her long stay in her dressing-room. She was absent in thought, abstracted, and on her brow was a discontented and perplexed frown. In monosyllables and somewhat irrelevantly she replied to the not frequent remarks of her patient aunt, that lady of unimpeachable respectability and aggressive piety, whose presence in the house, censorious people said, was less an act of charity on Mrs. Hilary Stanford's part than a propitiation of the god Propriety.

"You are expecting callers this evening, Mabel," at length said the aunt. "You should finish your dinner. The hour is late."

The youthful widow looked to the little French clock on the mantel and indifferently observed that the hands were approaching the hour of 8, but made no stir.

"Positively, my dear niece," the aunt went on, "you must take better care of yourself. Spending your days abroad and your nights entertaining is telling on you. You are looking worn to-night."

"That will never do," exclaimed the niece, brightening up by a sheer effort of will. "Ah, auntie, dear! I think the days of going abroad, as you call it, are about ended. And then-and then comes another worry. But then-then, too, will come the days of respectability-the respectability you so much adore, dear auntie. Mrs. Hilary Stanford, the adventuress, will have faded away into the highly respectable and most charitable Mrs. Stanford."

"I wish you would not call yourself such ugly names, Mabel," protested the aunt. "If all the world could know you as I do"

"But they don't, auntie, and they don't want to."

A servant came to bring the card of J. Percival Dunbar. From the brow of the hostess were smoothed away the frowns of perplexity, while the discontented droop of the corners of the mouth changed into the upward curl of a smile of pleasure. She left the table to find him in the drawing-room, near an open window.

"Come into the library," she said. "It is

cooler and we can be more retired for a time." She busied herself with selecting a comfortable seat for him, taking one in close proximity, but which threw her into the shade, while he was in the light.

"I expect Kitty Van Zandt to come in later --that's the reward I promised you for coming to see me. Before she comes I want a talk with you. Why is it that you do not give me your trust and confidence??'

That was precisely the question Percy had been asking himself as he had walked to her house. He had answered it himself in a way that annoyed him, for he had finally settled that, unable to reconcile her apparent frankness with him with the evident fact of her confidential relations with C. C. Edgar, and the two being incompatible, she was treacherous to some one. He resorted to evasion.

"I very much fear, Mrs. Stanford," he replied, "that I give confidence to no one-not even myself. It is a humiliating confession, for I find it is a quality not much admired in this world."

"Pardon me,' ," she said, very soberly, "if I say you are not frank. You give me neither trust nor confidence, because you cannot understand me. You think I am in the confidence of C. C. Edgar and you know I am making proffers of friendship to you, his enemy.

These you cannot reconcile. You think there is treachery in me.

Her penetration astonished him, while the vocalization of the word on her lips, as she sat before him, with something of appeal in the attitude of her lithe figure and her brown eyes, sounded harshly and disagreeably. He protested by gesture.

"Well, you are right," she said. "There is treachery. I am treacherous to C. C. Edgar-deliberately and purposely treacherous. I have made tenders of friendship to you, have shown my good faith and my trust in you by placing my fortune at your disposal to aid you in your efforts, and have, in spite of your repellant treatment, aided you. I should have had a better return than you have given me."

Not a little disconcerted and embarrassed because he recognized he was distrustful, Percy attempted to reply.

"Let me be frank with you," she went on. “I wanted to use you to an end. It was not to your disadvantage, nor to my advantage, save as it made you my instrument for punishment. As it is, you have pursued the lines I would have desired you to, but I think I should have felt happier to-night could I have felt that your movement along those lines had been because of the influence I had exerted."

Percy woke up from his mental somnolency with a start. He was irritated and he did not know why. It seemed to him that at the very moment she was confessing she had failed to use him, he had been used-that he had been a moving figure in events without an intellectual appreciation of his own acts. He reflected his own mental situation rather than described her relation to him, when he said: "Mrs. Hilary Stanford, this is incomprehensible."

"I have no doubt it is—that it will be as long as you are ignorant of my-my life-of me. I want your respect, J. Percival Dunbar. I am entitled to it. I, who have had to get along with so little of it from my dear friends and acquaintances-I say I am entitled to it." "Have I ever failed in showing respect?" asked Percy, weakly.

"No, not by word or deed. But all the same, you have doubted.”

She sprang to her feet with a quick motion, restrained herself, crossed the room to take a fan from a table and returned to say:

"Mr. Dunbar, you have already caught a fleeting glimpse of Mabel Purcell. You have known only Mrs. Hilary Stanford.

I'll give

you my life. And you shall judge. I have already told you that my mother and the wife of C. C. Edgar were cousins. I have also

« PreviousContinue »