EM 
 
 Mary J. L. Me Donald 
 
DAUGHTERS 
 OF THE RICH 
 
 By EDGAR SAL.TUS 
 
 tf 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE MACAULAY COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1909, 
 By Edgar Saltus 
 
 \ *" 
 
DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 A Novel 
 PART I 
 Entr acte 
 
 I White Peacocks 9 
 
 II The Inquest 22 
 
 III The Clue 39 
 
 PART II 
 The Daughters 
 
 I Sally s Duke 50 
 
 II A Little Token 74 
 
 III A Little Love 89 
 
 IV A Little Frisk 109 
 
 V The Villa Portugaise . . . .125 
 
 VI The Head 138 
 
 VII The Door 153 
 
 VIII The Duel 166 
 
 IX The Race 181 
 
 X The Devil 193 
 
 XI At the Sign of the Swan . . . .203 
 
 PART III 
 Afterward 
 
 I Perspectives 221 
 
 II The Benediction . . 245 
 
 98O486 
 
THE PEOPLE IN IT 
 
 Gerard Welden, M. F. H., An American sportsman 
 Maud Barhyte, a New York girl of the fashionable set 
 Sally Malakqff, afterward Mrs. Welden 
 The Due de Malakoff, Sally s first husband 
 Mrs. Kandy, Sally s mother, a rich widow 
 General Barhyte, Maud s father, a rich widower 
 The Comte de Dol, a French sportsman 
 The Marquis Aquaviva, an Italian sportsman 
 Prince Kara, a Russian sportsman 
 Lord Ferrers, an English sportsman 
 Mull Cantire, under-secretary, British Embassy, Paris 
 Mme. Oppensheim, a mondaine 
 Mme. de Cerisy, another mondaine 
 The Princesse de Solferino, a third mondaine 
 Louis Le Hillel, a swordsman 
 Baron Louradour, another swordsman 
 Dr. Binet- V aimer, one of the lights of French science 
 Society people, maitres d hotel, footmen, chauffeurs, 
 trainers, stable lads, surgeons, lawyers, a coroner, a 
 chief of police 
 
Daughters of the Rich 
 
 PART I 
 
 (Entr acte) 
 
 WHITE PEACOCKS 
 
 "Nearly a crumpler," said a fat-faced 
 man to Welden, whose horse, stumbling in 
 the main street of Santa Barbara, had al 
 most sat down. 
 
 Welden, pulling him together, dismount 
 ed. Supple and vigorous, he had an attract 
 ive face, laughing eyes and the air of being 
 some one. Moreover, if this street in South 
 ern California had been Rotten Row, he 
 could not have been more studiously attired. 
 His breeches were perfect. His boots had 
 
10 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 been marrowboned into blonde mirrors. 
 From one of them he flicked a speck with 
 his crop. 
 
 "What shall I do with the brute, Wicks?" 
 he asked. "And, by the way, if you expect 
 
 . me Jq Jbuy .him also, I will chuck the whole 
 thing. 
 
 ..* : Wicks v standing fat-faced and bare-head 
 ed in the sunshine, reddened with emotion. 
 The fish was landed, he told himself, and 
 none too soon. 
 
 Wicks was in real estate, with signs 
 signs which described him as the Alert 
 and Indefatigable Wicks strewn through 
 Santa Barbara, strewn, too, through the ad 
 jacent suburbs of Montecito and Miramar. 
 It had been a bad year, however. Of nibbles 
 there had been few, of bites none at all. In 
 stead of the usual regiment of opulent East 
 erners, so eager for a residence in the per 
 fumery and sunshine of the Slope, that they 
 took anything at any price, there had been 
 
WHITE PEACOCKS 11 
 
 but a handful of paupers, considering penu 
 rious bungalows. 
 
 Wicks, himself, had a bungalow, one un 
 fortunately mortgaged. Also, he had his 
 office before which, fat-faced and bare 
 headed, he stood. The rent was due and 
 back, toward the Sierra Madre, in that 
 bungalow, was Mrs. Wicks, two little 
 Wickses, and a hired girl. 
 
 These luxuries mean money, and to Wicks 
 money had become a haunting and elusive 
 thing. Then, suddenly, by special grace, in 
 the nick of time, just as the grocer was turn 
 ing ugly, Welden, with all the aroma of 
 wealth about him, had dropped from the 
 cars, demanding something fit and on the sea. 
 
 "Something," a woman who accompanied 
 this providence melodiously interluded, "in 
 which one, if one liked, could have a little 
 frisk." 
 
 As she spoke she had smiled, very infec 
 tiously, for Welden smiled too, and Wicks, 
 
12 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 who had not an idea what a little frisk: 
 might be, unless their visit could be so cata 
 logued, smiled also. But the woman s smile 
 was not merely infectious, there was in it 
 and about her a charm that was absolutely 
 relaxing. She exhaled ease and an atmos 
 phere indefinably foreign. 
 
 "Is she pretty?" the wife of Wicks bosom 
 inquired that evening when, on the porch of 
 the mortgaged bungalow, he told her the 
 incidents of the day. 
 
 "Yes, and better. I should say she was 
 she was " Here the Alert and Indefatig 
 able groped mentally after a term which 
 suddenly he nailed. "I should say she was 
 princessly." 
 
 "Princessly!" Mrs. Wicks dubiously re 
 peated. "How was she dressed?" 
 
 But the question was beyond Wicks, as 
 it is also beside the issue, which was in effect 
 that these luminous people had concluded to 
 consider White Peacocks, a house at Mira- 
 
WHITE PEACOCKS 13 
 
 mar, which an Englishman had leisurely 
 built and then, on acceding to a title, had 
 actively vacated, leaving it to Wicks to sell 
 for a hundred thousand dollars. "Not a ha 
 penny less," the Englishman had enjoined, 
 "and more if possible." "Certainly, my 
 lord," Wicks had replied, "I will try for a 
 hundred and fifty." 
 
 Then, simultaneously with the English 
 man s departure, there had occurred in Wall 
 street a panic from which germinated a 
 nightmare that sullenly overspread the en 
 tire land, and, until Welden appeared, no 
 one had come that would consider at any 
 price the purchase of the property. 
 
 But, on the first day, when in a motor, 
 hired by the hour, Wicks had taken the Wei- 
 dens there, he had felt that it was probably 
 a go. At the start, that is, once the main 
 street of Santa Barbara was behind them, 
 and they were rolling along the ocean boule 
 vard which leads to Miramar, he had 
 
14 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 mentioned, casually, as though it were an un 
 important detail, the top price, adding imme 
 diately and mechanically, after a habit of his: 
 "And such a bargain!" Then, mechanically 
 also, he had played the flute to its charms. 
 
 White Peacocks needed no aria from him 
 It breathed for itself. The grounds, full of 
 palms, of lilies, of masses and draperies of 
 purple and scarlet blooms, were like an un- 
 glassed conservatory open to the air. They 
 had the sea before them, the mountains be 
 hind, and the house with its thirty rooms, 
 every one of which was scented the year 
 around with geranium, with heliotrope and 
 with brine, was agreeably furnished, com 
 fortably arranged. Beyond, for servants, 
 was another house; a stable, a garage; and 
 in front of the main dwelling, on a lawn of 
 vivid green, a dove-coloured peacock moved 
 gingerly, almost moodily, but, at sight of 
 them, expanded slowly yet demeasurably 
 the fan of its extravagant tail. 
 
WHITE PEACOCKS 15 
 
 It was the finishing touch. 
 
 Wicks, conscious of the impression pro 
 duced, had been about to play the flute 
 again, when Welden, who had been talking 
 in French with his wife, turned to him. 
 
 "I will try it for a month; then, if it still 
 pleases Mrs. Welden, I will make an offer." 
 
 Wicks, the Alert, the Indefatigable, 
 sighed and looked down. Actually at the 
 moment he was in agony. The unexpected 
 and magnificent fish that had so providen 
 tially come into his net was wriggling unar- 
 restably away. The commission on a 
 month s rental was all on which he could 
 surely count. 
 
 Conscious, however, that he must make 
 some reply, with an effort he rallied. 
 
 "I don t know," he said, "that the owner 
 would care to rent the property. But if 
 price seems " 
 
 Welden, standing there supple and smil 
 ing, cut him short. 
 
16 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "I never argue." 
 
 After all, Wicks had immediately reflect 
 ed, the property was worth certainly a 
 thousand a month to any one who could 
 be induced to pay it. At ten per cent, that 
 meant a hundred for him, with the chance 
 still of the bigger commission. 
 
 "Very good, sir," he had replied. "I will 
 assume the responsibility." 
 
 In this manner the business had been tem 
 porarily concluded. On the premises was 
 a lame ostler, who was Irish; a minute gar 
 dener, who was Japanese; a half-breed man 
 of all work and an obese negro cook. These 
 the Weldens retained, reinforcing them 
 with servants of their own and with others 
 recruited from Los Angeles preparations 
 which seemed to postulate permanency if 
 signs and portents might. But Wicks 
 could be sure of nothing, nor was he, until 
 this radiant forenoon, when the crumpler 
 nearly occurred, and Welden, damning the 
 brute, dismounted. 
 
WHITE PEACOCKS 17 
 
 It was then, reddening with emotion, that 
 these anterior events were recalled, for now, 
 at last, the fish, the magnificent fish, was 
 landed. 
 
 "No, certainly not, we won t burden you 
 with him," he replied in answer to Welden s 
 protest. "If you will take a seat in my of 
 fice for a moment, I will leave him at the 
 livery across the way." 
 
 Pleasurably, a hand on the bridle, he led 
 the horse off. The netting of the fish meant 
 at seven and a half per cent., which was 
 the commission agreed in the event of the 
 top figure being reached eleven hundred 
 and twenty-five dollars. It was certainly 
 a very radiant forenoon. 
 
 Welden, meanwhile, flicking still at his 
 boots, strolled into the office and sat down on 
 one of the three chairs which the place con 
 tained. On the wall was a map. Beneath 
 was a pulpit desk, high and narrow. On it 
 were documents, a china cat, other things 
 as well, but most noticeably, a telephone, 
 
18 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 which, as Welden seated himself, began ring 
 ing. 
 
 Welden, still flicking at his boots, stared 
 aimlessly about. On one of the other chairs 
 was the local sheet ; he reached for it and was 
 looking over the news of the day when 
 Wicks reappeared. 
 
 "Excuse me," said the agent, who went 
 to the telephone, which had continued to 
 ring. 
 
 Welden but glanced at him. He had just 
 read that the New York Central had de 
 creased its dividend. The item was of in 
 terest; he happened to be a stockholder and 
 mentally he began on a calculation which 
 Wicks, his hand on the receiver, interrupted. 
 
 "It s for you. Your man, I think. He 
 wants to speak to you." 
 
 Absently Welden looked up. "Non 
 sense," he presently remarked. "Harris 
 knows better than that. If there is any mes 
 sage, though, tell them to give it to you." 
 
WHITE PEACOCKS 19 
 
 Then, after fumbling in a pocket, he got 
 out a gold pencil with which he jotted fig 
 ures on the margin of the paper that he held. 
 But the operation did not prevent him from 
 hearing. 
 
 "Yes," Wicks was saying. "Mr. Wei- 
 den is here. Mr. Welden says you are to 
 tell me for him. He What !" 
 
 At the "What," which was not a query, 
 but an exclamation, Welden replaced the 
 gold top on the pencil and putting it back in 
 his pocket, turned again to the news. 
 
 Before him Wicks stood, the receiver at 
 his ear, a hand pendent at his side. It was 
 shaking a little. 
 
 The motion, odd in itself, attracted Wel 
 den. His eyes roamed slowly upward from 
 it to the agent s face. Wicks was standing 
 now, his inouth half open, looking limply 
 at him. 
 
 Welden tossed the paper aside. 
 
 "Are you ill?" 
 
20 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Wicks closed his mouth, shook his head, 
 then partly opened his mouth again. But 
 still he did not speak. 
 
 Welden stood up. "Are you?" he repeat 
 ed. 
 
 Then finally Wicks did speak. "Your 
 wife!" he said slowly, and hanging the re 
 ceiver up, flopped into a chair. 
 
 The nightmare that had overspread the 
 land was battening individually on him. 
 Through it the face of the grocer peered. 
 With the grocer was the mortgagee. Both 
 were throwing him and his out on the coun 
 try road. That indeed might yet occur. At 
 the moment, however, he was but being 
 shaken, not roughly, but authoritatively, 
 from a form of mental swoon. 
 
 "What is this about Mrs. Welden? 
 Why the devil don t you tell me? Is she 
 ill?" 
 
 Wicks, the Alert and Indefatigable, 
 could but nod in reply. 
 
WHITE PEACOCKS 21 
 
 "Very?" Welden persisted. "Come, 
 damnation, don t keep me questioning you 
 like this. What did they say?" 
 
 The winded Wicks now had got his breath. 
 He straightened himself, and rising from the 
 chair, put a hand on Welden s arm. 
 
 "She is " And Wicks raised his eyes. 
 
 "Not dead!" cried Welden, starting back. 
 
 Wicks moved nearer and with that sym 
 pathy which, in certain crises, one human 
 being will always show to another, said low- 
 
 iy: 
 
 "Mr. Welden, they tell me that this lady 
 has been killed." 
 
 "Killed!" Welden, again starting back, 
 repeated; "but how?" 
 
 Then the detail, passably gruesome, was . 
 produced. 
 
 "They found her in bed, her throat cut 
 from ear to ear." 
 
II 
 
 THE INQUEST 
 
 Astride the brute on which ten minutes 
 before the crumpler had nearly occurred, 
 Welden tore down the street, galloped along 
 the ocean boulevard, and on, into a scarlet 
 lane, at the end of which stood White Pea 
 cocks. 
 
 The entrance was a bit beyond. Rather 
 than make the brief circuit, he cleared a 
 hedge, raced through the grounds and flung 
 himself off at the steps of the verandah. 
 
 In the hall, through the open door, he had 
 a glimpse of servants huddled together, and 
 of a woman, her face to the wall, whimper 
 ing like a frightened cur. 
 
 On the floor above, at the head of the 
 stairs, a man of the unmistakable domestic 
 type stood uncertainly. 
 
THE INQUEST 23 
 
 Welden pointed below. "Send those 
 people where they belong." 
 
 Hurrying by, he wrenched open a door 
 which he closed behind him. When present 
 ly that door reopened, he looked older; not 
 white, but worn. 
 
 As before, at the head of the stair, the 
 man was standing. Welden motioned him 
 into another room, one wainscotted with 
 bookless bookcases, from which two windows 
 gave on the sea. 
 
 Through one of them Welden looked, 
 though certainly it was not the sea that he 
 saw. After a moment he turned. The man 
 was standing by a table, his hands hanging 
 at his sides. In and out of the palms the 
 fingers moved, regularly, mechanically, per 
 haps unconsciously. 
 
 "Harris, close the door." 
 
 The man obeyed. 
 
 Welden added: "Tell me everything." 
 
 "It was my wife, sir, Perkins. She was 
 
24 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 taking in the tray with the breakfast things, 
 and when she saw, she let it fall and ran out 
 and called to me, and I telephoned to Mr. 
 Wickses." 
 
 "Have any of you any idea who did it?" 
 
 "No, sir, but" 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 "Thinking as how you would wish it, I 
 telephoned to the police." 
 
 Welden nodded. "I told Wicks to. They 
 will be here shortly. Fetch some brandy and 
 soda." 
 
 Harris turned. He was reopening the 
 door when, through the windows, came the 
 whirr of a motor, the sound of voices, the 
 shuffle of feet. 
 
 "If that is the police," said Welden, "send 
 them here." 
 
 From an oblong silver box that lay on the 
 table he took a cigarette. While he was 
 lighting it Harris reappeared. Accompany 
 ing him was a large man with small eyes, a 
 
THE INQUEST 25 
 
 deformed stomach and a red moustache. As 
 he entered he looked Welden over. 
 
 "I m Chief of Police," he announced. 
 "Right off I want" 
 
 But Welden, accustomed to give orders 
 and not at all to receive them, cut him short. 
 
 "Harris, show the way. Do whatever 
 is required. The brandy and soda can 
 wait." 
 
 In a little, however, the liquor was forth 
 coming. 
 
 "There are two of them, sir, besides the 
 chief," Harris volunteered, placing, as he 
 spoke, the bottles on the table. "And the 
 coroner is here." 
 
 Welden, who had seated himself, took an 
 other cigarette. Through the windows 
 came the savour of salt, the scent of flowers ; 
 there came, too, the bark of a dog, caught 
 up and repeated. The forenoon was depart 
 ing in perfect clarity and, save for an occa 
 sional footfall, save, too, for an indistinct 
 
26 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 murmur of voices, in a peace that was per 
 fect as well. 
 
 Shortly the silence was stirred. There 
 came a rap at the door. Before Welden 
 could answer, it opened. The chief entered. 
 With him was a little man, with smoke- 
 coloured glasses and a suit of leprous brown. 
 
 Closing the door, the officer indicated his 
 companion. "This here is Dr. Quizen- 
 berry, the coroner. We re goin to ask some 
 questions." 
 
 "Sit down," said Welden. "Will you 
 drink anything?" 
 
 The chief accepted, but the coroner re 
 fused. Welden filled a tumbler which he 
 gave to the former. 
 
 He drank it noisily. "Nasty business," 
 he muttered. "Damn nasty." Wiping his 
 mouth and drawing a chair, he seated him 
 self in front of Welden. "When did you 
 last see yer wife?" 
 
 "A moment before you got here. You 
 
THE INQUEST 27 
 
 probably mean, though, when did I last see 
 her alive. That was at midnight." 
 
 "Nothin unusual been goin on?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 The chief gnawed moodily at a finger nail. 
 His thoughts were few and slow. He was 
 assisting at their laborious accouchement. 
 Presently, delivered of one, he looked sus 
 piciously at it and from it to Welden. 
 
 "You and yer wife had separate rooms?" 
 
 Welden nodded. 
 
 "The man out there showed me yours, it s 
 on the other side of the house." 
 
 Again Welden nodded. 
 
 "Durin the night you heard nothin ?" 
 
 "Nothing whatever. But in regard to my 
 domestic arrangements you may have no 
 ticed that in this house there are but two 
 sleeping porches, one abutting from my 
 room, the other from Mrs. Welden s. I 
 have been in California before and when here 
 I prefer to sleep in the open air. Mrs. Wei- 
 
28 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 den had not accustomed herself to it, though 
 naturally she slept with the windows open." 
 "That s right," said Dr. Quizenherry, 
 "and with the screen door to the porch un 
 fastened. Anybody could have climbed 
 
 in." 
 
 "Anythin missin ?" the chief inquired. 
 
 "I do not know," Welden answered. 
 "Usually Mrs. Welden did not appear 
 much before noon. This morning, long be 
 fore she would ordinarily have been up, I was 
 in Santa Barbara. Since I got back I have 
 had no time to look." 
 
 Under the steady gaze of Welden s eyes, 
 and the prompt and rapid fire of his speech, 
 the chief s laboriously accouched suspicion 
 died. Burying it decently, he asked: "Had 
 yer wife any enemies?" 
 
 "Probably," Welden, with an uplift of the 
 chin, replied. "But hardly among such 
 people." 
 
 At that the chief leaned forward. The 
 
THE INQUEST 29 
 
 coroner cocked an eye. The possibility that 
 the statement had not been understood, oc 
 curred to Welden. 
 
 "I mean," he resumed, "that such enemies 
 as Mrs. Welden may have had were of her 
 own class, and assuming the impossible, as 
 suming, that is, that their enmity could have 
 been murderous, they would hardly have 
 gone about it in this way." 
 
 "Hey?" the chief, groping still in dark 
 ness, threw out. 
 
 But the coroner had got it. "That s 
 right," he threw in. "It s not the crime of 
 an educated person; more like some Jack 
 the Ripper business." 
 
 "Or the Roo Morgue," the now enlight 
 ened chief insinuated, indicating by the in 
 sinuation that he, at any rate, was educated. 
 "You ve a greaser here," he continued. "I 
 don t care for him, or for the Jap either." 
 
 "They were here before I came," Welden 
 answered. "There is also an Irishman, a 
 
SO DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 negro and some servants we got from Los 
 Angeles. I know nothing about any of them. 
 But Harris, the man who showed you about, 
 and Perkins, his wife, came with us from 
 Europe. I have every confidence in them. 
 Perkins always took care of Mrs. Welden s 
 jewelry." 
 
 "Had she much?" 
 
 For a moment Welden s long thin fingers 
 beat a tattoo on the arm of his chair. "Quite 
 a lot," he finally replied. "But the majority 
 of it is at our bankers in Paris. Here Mrs. 
 Welden had with her a string of pearls, a 
 few pins and some rather valuable rings 
 which she got recently in India." 
 
 "There are no rings on her hands. Did 
 she sleep with em?" 
 
 "Really," said Welden, "I am not sure. 
 My impression is that she did not." 
 
 "What were they, dimons?" 
 
 Welden drummed for a moment again. 
 "There were two table-cut diamonds, two 
 
THE INQUEST SI 
 
 tallow drop emeralds, an inch-long sapphire 
 and a double ruby, a ruby set on a ruby, one 
 on top of the other." 
 
 The chief sat up. "What would yer say 
 they were worth?" 
 
 Welden, running his fingers through his 
 thick, bright hair, looked at the ceiling and 
 then back at the officer. "At Delhi, in our 
 money, the rubies cost forty-five thousand, 
 altogether the others cost as much more. 
 Here, of course, they would come higher." 
 
 The chief whistled. It was his welcome to 
 the light, clear, direct, unequivocal, which 
 then broke fully upon him. He jumped to 
 his feet. 
 
 "If they re gone," he exclaimed, "there s 
 the motive. Let s see if they ve been 
 pinched." 
 
 "That s right," said Dr. Quizenberry, ris 
 ing too. 
 
 "Chief," said Welden, rising also, "I was 
 in that room before you came. It may give 
 
32 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 you a poor opinion of me, but it will be a 
 little before I care to return." 
 
 "Poor opinion! Lord! If my wife had 
 been done up as yours has, 111 be jiggered if 
 I could show your nerve. It s grit yer got, 
 real grit." 
 
 "That s right," the coroner repeated. 
 "That s right." 
 
 But Welden had rung for Harris. As the 
 authorities passed from the room he went 
 again to the window. 
 
 Before him the Pacific stretched, a syrupy 
 blue. Over it he looked and far beyond, to 
 another ocean, one that beat against the 
 coast of France. Above it a vision mounted, 
 the picture of a pillowed head. That picture, 
 photographed on the mind s encephalic films, 
 became a negative on which developed others. 
 At Deauville, in the hall of a villa, he 
 saw 
 
 "Mr. Welden," some one was saying. 
 
 He turned. The authorities were before 
 
THE INQUEST 33 
 
 him, the chief nodding significantly while 
 the other grimly smiled. 
 
 "Won t you have another drink?" Wei- 
 den asked. 
 
 "Yes, I will," said the chief. 
 
 "That s right," said the coroner, "I will 
 too." 
 
 Then, as they helped themselves and stood 
 there, the one large, the other small, both 
 ludicrous and equally imbecile, they re 
 minded Welden of some scene, in some play, 
 that he had seen somewhere long before. 
 
 "The pearls and pins are safe," the big 
 man began. "They were locked in a bag, and 
 they re there now. But the rings are gone. 
 The maid says they were on the dressin table 
 last night, when she was gettin yer wife 
 ready for bed. Since which they ve been 
 cribbed. Whoever pinched em did it, and 
 I ll bet yer now I know who that is, for 
 though they re gone, somethin has turned 
 up. Can yer guess what?" 
 
34 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 But Welden could not. 
 
 "The instrument! When there s any fun 
 ny business, that s what we look for; that and 
 the motive. When we ve both, we ve only 
 to show the opportunity to nail the man. 
 Well, we have. It s the Irishman. The 
 knife was in the barn. The motive and 
 motive enough was the rings; the oppor 
 tunity" 
 
 "But," Welden protested, "the poor devil 
 is lame. He could not have climbed to the 
 porch." 
 
 "Oho! You don t know how spry a lame 
 man can be. Besides, how do we know that 
 he did climb? In a house like this, unless the 
 boss sees to it himself, yer never sure about 
 the doors and windows. Anyhow, what 
 did he have a carving knife stuck in his hay 
 for? That s no place for a bleeder. Lord! 
 And an alibi rollin right out of him. That s 
 the way with these vermin. Whenever they 
 do anythin crooked, they always have an 
 
THE INQUEST 35 
 
 alibi and more vermin to back em up. It s 
 my sworn duty to protect the bastard, but, 
 if it wasn t, Lord! I d say lynch him. I 
 wasn t raised here, I came from the South." 
 
 "That s right," the coroner remarked, and 
 meditatively finished his glass. 
 
 "Well, anyhow, he s on his way to the 
 lock-up," the chief continued, putting down 
 his own. 
 
 "When s the inquest?" he asked, turning 
 to Dr. Quizenberry. 
 
 "To-morrow noon." 
 
 Turning to Welden he added: "I can 
 count on yer to be there?" 
 
 "Naturally," Welden answered, and the 
 authorities withdrew. 
 
 When they had gone, Welden took from 
 his pocket a letter, one already opened, 
 which he re-read, tore slowly to bits, and then 
 poured out a glass of brandy. Before he had 
 finished it, Harris reappeared. 
 
 "Will you have luncheon, sir?" 
 
36 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Welden nodded. "You and Perkins must 
 get everything in order. You must also find 
 an undertaker. Say that he is to arrange 
 about a plot and that he is also to arrange 
 with an Episcopal clergyman to hold services 
 here and at the grave. Afterward, I shall 
 not require Perkins, and as I cannot expect 
 you to leave her, I will give you each six 
 months wages, and your expenses home." 
 
 "Thank you, sir, I am sure we are both 
 very grateful. Will you have luncheon here, 
 sir, or in the breakfast room?" 
 
 "I will have it here. By the way, Mrs. 
 Welden is to be in ball gown. The canary 
 one, Perkins will know, with a lace scarf 
 about the neck, high up. If the scarf is in 
 sufficient, use an opera cloak, the violet and 
 gold one. Perkins will know about that 
 also." 
 
 "Yes, sir. It will be attended to. ShaU I 
 fetch the luncheon now, sir?" 
 
 Welden nodded. 
 
THE INQUEST 37 
 
 In a little while the man returned with a 
 tray. When he had arranged it, he said: 
 
 "Begging your pardon, sir, I was to ask 
 would you wish the hair marcelled?" 
 
 "Whatever is necessary. And, Harris " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Tell the undertaker that before the coffin 
 is closed, he is to notify me. I wish to go 
 there." 
 
 "Yes, sir; thank you, sir. Luncheon is 
 served." 
 
 For hours Welden sat, looking at the 
 sea, looking, too, at the pictures that devel 
 oped on the mind s encephalic films. 
 
 Toward sunset, other pictures developed. 
 On the horizon clouds, sinister and malig 
 nant, shaped themselves into the resemblance 
 of enormous centaurs, combating with each 
 other for mountains of gold and of flame. 
 The sky was dyed with their wounds, flooded 
 with the hemorrhages of the monstrous mas 
 sacre. Sometimes masses of flesh were torn 
 
38 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 and hurled into craters. Sometimes others 
 were tossed like shawls across the bleeding 
 sky. 
 
 Eastward, from over the Sierra Madre, 
 titans trooped to the fight. It was as though 
 they had sprung suddenly across the ages 
 from their fabulous dream, and just as they 
 menaced the world, abruptly they vanished. 
 Before them an immense arc had been flung. 
 Within the rainbow, throughout its entire 
 semi-circumference, a vapour floated, thick, 
 glistening and mauve. 
 
 Presently, as if a curtain had risen, that 
 passed, banished by the sudden sun. From 
 the west the centaurs had fled, and now, 
 throughout the heavens, stretched archipel 
 agoes, deliciously pink, that seemed like 
 lands of love. 
 
 Coerced by the splendour of the spectacle, 
 Welden had gone out on the lawn. The 
 fair beauty of the sky detained him. It 
 seemed inaugural of larger life. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE CLUE 
 
 To the vulgar any indecency is amusing, 
 the greater the shamelessness of it the more 
 thorough the mirth; and, on the morrow, 
 there was thrown into this tenebrous drama, 
 a quick note hilarious and obscene, one that, 
 with the usual attentuations, went reverber 
 ating through the press. For the case, al 
 ready famous, entered at once into that high 
 spectacular class which invites people, pre 
 viously unacquainted, to discuss and surmise. 
 
 In the trains, on the boats, in smoking 
 compartments, wherever men are penned to 
 gether, individuals who had never seen each 
 other before, and who, ordinarily, would not 
 much wish to again, found in it a subject of 
 common concern. 
 
 Perhaps nothing excites the imagination 
 
40 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 quite so thoroughly as mystery does, and 
 here was one graduated to every taste, a 
 story equally absorbing to high and low, 
 and not locally merely, for, as it was imme 
 diately recognised, the Weldens were people 
 of position, both at home and abroad. 
 
 According to statements telegraphed to 
 the California press, from New York, Wei- 
 den s family had been identified with that 
 city since its incorporation, and even before, 
 at a time when it was Nieuw Orange, and 
 not yet New York. While, as for the mur 
 dered woman, born a Kandy, and affiliated 
 with quite Manhattan s best, she had mar 
 ried Welden after divorcing her first hus 
 band, a foreigner, the Due de Malakoff. 
 
 To these outlines, details were added. 
 Prior to the marriage, Welden, who was a 
 man of inherited wealth, had been engaged 
 to Miss Barhyte, a New York girl of the 
 ultra-fashionable set. But, coincidentally 
 with the divorce, the engagement had been 
 
THE CLUE 41 
 
 broken, and Welden and Malakoff had 
 gone out together, though, after the French 
 fashion, without appreciable damage. 
 
 But why had they gone out? Why had 
 the engagement been broken, and why the 
 divorce ? 
 
 Here were pleasurable mysteries super 
 posing themselves on the denser darkness of 
 the crime, and suggesting to the detectives 
 of the breakfast table that it was assassins of 
 the duke who had done it ; if not, then emis 
 saries of the girl. 
 
 For by the time the foregoing and very in 
 correct details, together with bogus present 
 ments of all concerned, had been journalis 
 tically set forth, by that time, the lame ostler 
 had been released. 
 
 Amid great hilarity and to the satisfac 
 tion of everybody save of one policeman 
 only he had demonstrated that if at the 
 hour, two A. M., at which time it had been 
 shown the crime was committed, he were il- 
 
42 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 legally occupied, the illegality had been ef 
 fected at Santa Barbara with the privity, 
 connivance and in the society of that police 
 man s wife. The woman, immediately sum 
 moned, had at first hotly denied, but 
 prodded with questions at once circumstan 
 tial and deplorably intimate, finally yielded, 
 and admitted the fact. 
 
 Thereupon, no one else being under sus 
 picion, and no further evidence having been 
 adduced, verdict was rendered that the de 
 ceased had come to her death at the hands of 
 some person or persons unknown. 
 
 Then, for the bono publicanism of it 
 which, being interpreted, meant little more 
 than the coin of affluent Easterners, 
 who, already scarce, might become scarcer 
 it was felt that town and county 
 ought to make the apprehension of the 
 person or persons definitely worth while. 
 But before the matter could be put into an 
 inviting shape, provided, that is, there was 
 
THE CLUE 43 
 
 any real intention of so putting it, Welden 
 offered a reward of $25,000 for such infor 
 mation as would lead to their arrest and con 
 viction; $5,000 additional for the recovery 
 of the rings. 
 
 The gross amount, a small fortune to 
 some, a large one to many, fevered a number 
 of people and, among them, Wicks partic 
 ularly. 
 
 In those days, Wicks was an unhappy 
 man. Only a fortnight had intervened be 
 tween the renting of White Peacocks and 
 the morning on which Welden had intimated 
 his intention of buying the property. Then 
 this thing had occurred, and from his hand, 
 from his lips even, the cup had been torn. 
 The cup, or more exactly its contents, the 
 compensation, would have sufficed until Jan 
 uary, when the Eastern influx of affluence 
 was usually due. But this was April. Jan- 
 was many moons away, and things 
 very bleak in the mortgaged bun- 
 
44 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 galow, on the porch of which, endlessly he 
 went over them all. It was, though, a dis 
 tressed and weary Wicks who did it, and 
 weary and distressed was the woman whom 
 he forced to hear and rehear the tale. 
 
 Then, into the bleakness of things, there 
 tumbled the announcement of the rewards. 
 They inflamed Wicks, who, though he lacked 
 the gift of divination, was at least alert and 
 indefatigable, or at least, so claimed to be, 
 and these were attributes which, chance facil 
 itating, might aid him to secure the por 
 tentous sum. In his favour moreover was 
 his superior quality of agent of the estate. 
 Strangers might hover about there, detect 
 ives, whether amateur or professional, 
 might prowl there as well, and against these 
 the guilty would be on their guard, whereas 
 his presence would be taken as a matter of 
 course. In the mere exercise of his func 
 tions he was free to roam at will. 
 
 These considerations, natural in them- 
 
THE CLUE 45 
 
 selves, had for basis an assumption, which 
 Wicks by no means reached alone, that the 
 murder was the work of someone directly 
 associated with the estate. Possibly it might 
 have been done by a passing bandit. Pos 
 sibly, also, the criminal might be a pirate 
 come in from the sea. But in that case it 
 were necessary to assume on the part of an 
 outsider, an entire familiarity with the lo 
 cale, and a knowledge not only of the 
 jewels, but of the intimate fact that the 
 dead woman slept alone. Acquaintance 
 with these matters was of course possible, 
 for the reason that anything and everything 
 is. But, at least, it was not probable. 
 
 Eliminating, therefore, the outsider, the 
 murder was necessarily the work of some 
 of those within. From the latter the adul 
 terous ostler was already excluded. The 
 others, the half-breed, the negro, the Japan 
 ese, together with the laundress, a scullion 
 and a housemaid, recruited from Los An- 
 
40 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 geles, were all quartered in a separate build 
 ing. The fact had been brought out at the 
 inquest, where it had been also shown that 
 during the Weldens tenancy, none of them, 
 except the housemaid, the scullion and the 
 cook, had ever entered the house; and into 
 the main part of it, as distinct from the 
 kitchen and its offices, the cook and the scul 
 lion had not once, except on the morning 
 when the murder was discovered, been known 
 or permitted to come. 
 
 The housemaid had necessarily the run of 
 it, but by day only, and while information 
 concerning the rings might have been con 
 veyed by her to other parties, she would not 
 have been aware that they were unprotected 
 at night, unless she had been so informed 
 by Perkins, or by Harris, who as Perkins 
 husband, probably knew as much as she did. 
 
 On the other hand, information of this 
 character would hardly be supplied by upper 
 servants, who lived apart from the others, 
 
THE CLUE 47 
 
 particularly as one might say, on an 
 acquaintance so brief. You never can tell, 
 however, yet accepting the facts as they 
 appeared, the matter narrowed down to 
 those who slept in the house, that is to say, 
 to Harris and Perkins. 
 
 For clearly Welden was out of it, if for 
 no other reason than because, had he wished 
 to be rid of the lady, a brief sojourn in 
 neighbourly Nevada would suffice to set him 
 legally free. Or, if divorce seemed circui 
 tous, a slight shove from the bluff, a taran 
 tula put nesting in her bed, and, without in 
 convenience, the thing was done. But any 
 thing of the kind was beyond peradventure, 
 in addition to being absurd. Men of the 
 world do not kill an obnoxious wife. They 
 find it simpler to detest her. Moreover, 
 such men as do murder their wives, do not 
 first steal the lady s jewels and then offer a 
 reward for their own apprehension, another 
 for the recovery of the gems. They do not, 
 
48 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 that is, unless they are lunatics, and anyone 
 saner than Welden it were difficult to 
 meet. 
 
 These deductions Wicks did not reach 
 unaided or even as they are here set forth. 
 On the contrary, they were prompted in part 
 by the press, partly by the wife of his bosom. 
 As a consequence, they were superficial and, 
 therefore, unsound. But they satisfied, so 
 fully even that he kept an alert eye on Har 
 ris, an indefatigable one on Perkins. 
 
 In spite of which he saw nothing sus 
 picious. At the time being he was not, how 
 ever, as close to them as he could have wished, 
 and that defect he artfully remedied. After 
 the funeral, Welden, leaving for address 
 the Plaza, New York, boarded a train and 
 was taken away. But these two remained 
 in situations luringly procured at wages- 
 California wages! such as they had never 
 known, never heard of or even dreamed. 
 
 Then for a while mention of the murder, 
 
THE CLUE 49 
 
 dropped by the press, faded from Miramar. 
 But not from Santa Barbara. There the 
 Alert and Indefatigable, after rehearsing it 
 endlessly to his weary wife, happened sud 
 denly on a clue. 
 
PAKT II 
 THE DAUGHTERS 
 
 I 
 SALLY S DUKE 
 
 To go back a little. 
 
 Sally Malakoff was twenty. She was 
 rich, good looking, and a duchess, yet she 
 described herself as a miserable woman and 
 the world believed her. But though the 
 world believed it did not sympathise. It was 
 felt that she had not acted as she should have. 
 For that there were excuses. 
 
 A little while before she had married a 
 brute. Though a New York girl, she was 
 at the time very ignorant. In the way we 
 live now that is exceptional. Married women 
 
SALLY S DUKE 51 
 
 discuss matters before the young person 
 with a clarity which leaves her nothing to 
 guess ahout. Through some miracle. Sally 
 had heen left in the dark. A contributory 
 cause may have heen her mentality which was 
 shallow, but. as she was naturally sly, the 
 miracle was none the less marvellous. Other 
 wise, in appearance and manner that is, she 
 was a typically sweet young tiling. She 
 talked nicely ahout nothing. Her features 
 were dainty and delicate. Her hair was 
 dark and she had mauve eyes, which, ob 
 lique and half closed, gave her an aspect 
 faintly Chinese. Born a Kaudy, and known 
 generally as Sugar Candy, she quite lived 
 up to the name. 
 
 Heat sugar and abruptly it boils. Sally 
 did boil, not long, and not effervescent ly. 
 but with a sort of contained rage. Mar 
 riage she had seen somewhere defined as an 
 nation for the pursuit of things human 
 and divine, and it was with angry amaze- 
 
52 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 ment that she discovered what, in her case, 
 was the derisive falsity of the definition. 
 
 During the honeymoon, or more exactly 
 during Malakoif s, for the girl was but an 
 indignant participator in it, the man ap 
 proached her after the fashion of a pasha 
 who has acquired a slave. The girl loathed 
 him for it, and it was that loathing perhaps 
 which directly precipitated this drama. On 
 the other hand, if, as it has been affirmed, 
 one s destiny is preordered, it may be that 
 even otherwise the result would have been the 
 same. Admitting fatality, one s moods 
 cannot alter it. But the fault of it, in so far 
 at least as is humanly discernible, rested, 
 primarily, not with Sally s husband, but with 
 her mother, never more than a relative to 
 this girl, whose father had been but an ac 
 quaintance. 
 
 The latter, Sam Kandy, could have had 
 but three objects in life; to marry, have a 
 child and make a fortune; for these things 
 
SALLY S DUKE 53 
 
 accomplished, he concluded to die, and did 
 so, after the fine New York fashion, with 
 no fuss whatever, and in a manner which 
 Mrs. Kandy, who had no affection for him, 
 or for anyone save herself, described as most 
 gentlemanly. 
 
 That, though, was only an amiable com 
 monplace. In New York it is a man s mere 
 duty to leave a lot of money. Sam Kandy 
 bequeathed to his daughter one million for 
 life, with reversion to her issue, failing which, 
 the principal passed to his nephews. To his 
 widow he left six million absolutely. 
 
 The provisions of the will enabled Mrs. 
 Kandy to bear the testator s loss with a 
 fortitude eminently Christian. She was a 
 large, fair woman, with a large, fair wig, and 
 the purplish complexion which internal dis 
 turbances when combined with poudre de riz 
 will impart, and when through a jewelled 
 lorgnette, she surveyed the trappings of her 
 woe, she declared in the shrill voice which 
 
54 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 was habitual to her, that black is not be 
 coming. 
 
 Nor is it. But the lady must have pre 
 ferred colours. Shortly she resumed them, 
 and, with Sally, betook herself to Paris. 
 
 It was in Paris that Malakoff was en 
 countered, and the marriage ensued. 
 
 Jean-Rene-Marie, Due de Malakoff, 
 Prince de 1 Alma, had, from adolescence, 
 been trained like a colt for the Grand Prix 
 in the international steeplechase of marriage. 
 "Duchesse de Malakoff," his mother, cease 
 lessly, had dinged in his ears. "That, at the 
 lowest, is worth ten million francs." The 
 poor woman knew. Five million francs was 
 what her people had paid five million 
 thrown in the gutter and since then prices 
 had doubled. But her son, thus far, when 
 not outclassed, had been outpaced. There 
 was Miss Murray, the American heiress, 
 welshed from him by Solferino. There was 
 Miss Beux, laden down with brewery guin- 
 
SALLY S DUKE 55 
 
 eas, whom d Ostende had won by a nose. 
 There was Mile. Moses, the pearl of the 
 Ghetto, whom d Eylau had jockeyed away. 
 There was Senorita Lopez y Montez, sole 
 child of the Chilean Croesus, whom Cam- 
 baceres had filched from his hand. 
 
 These misadventures diminished the lus 
 tre of a title that, while obviously Second 
 Empire, was yet a trifle heavy for one who 
 has nothing, which, barring debts the float 
 ing debt of the duchy and an assortment 
 of vices the traditional vices of the French 
 nobility constituted the sole possessions of 
 this man, who was not bad looking. 
 
 Malakoff had blue-black hair, blue-black 
 eyes, a thin, straight nose, and a retreating 
 chin, which a pointed beard concealed. With 
 out being tall, he was not short, but, since the 
 misadventures, perhaps out of training, for 
 he had ceased to give in at the waist. He 
 dressed less abominably than the majority 
 of Frenchmen, got his clothes from London, 
 
56 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 and with them displayed an air of being sur 
 rounded by lackeys ready at a gesture from 
 him to shut the door in anyone s face, that 
 air of indisputable superiority which, at an 
 earlier epoch, when the nobility had been 
 divested of other insignia, persisted, and so 
 exasperated that the one remedy for its ar 
 rogance was the austere guillotine. 
 
 Though seigneurial in appearance he 
 could when it suited him unbend. On 
 such occasions he was affable or merely ca 
 naille. 
 
 Mrs. Kandy, who met him on the stalk 
 ing ground which the American embassy is, 
 thought him simply fascinating. To Sally, 
 he was part of the landscape, and that not 
 from any democratic disdain she had none, 
 the New York girl never does have any 
 but for the more intimate reason that in the 
 neighbourhood of Fifth Avenue there was a 
 man with laughing eyes, with whom she fan 
 cied herself in love. 
 
SALLY S DUKE 57 
 
 Sally, quoted currently at ten million 
 francs, flattered MalakofFs eye. He had 
 trained for more, but latterly he felt that he 
 had trained in vain. 
 
 Mrs. Kandy, who had trained also, but 
 only in social values, for which she had a 
 naive and inexact appreciation, encouraged 
 him to make up to the girl, when she saw that 
 he had no intention of making up to the girl s 
 mamma, which he certainly would have, had 
 he known the terms of Sam Kandy s will. 
 
 He did not know, however, nor, at the 
 moment, was there any one that could ac 
 quaint him with them, except Mrs. Kandy, 
 who, in telling the truth, which she some 
 times did, sometimes found it advantageous 
 not to tell all of it. 
 
 "And so you wish to have my little girl 
 for your wife," she shrilly resumed, when, in 
 the elaborate suite which she occupied at the 
 Elysee Hotel, the formal and unleisurely 
 demand had been made. 
 
58 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Partly that," he replied in the passable 
 English which he had acquired in prepara 
 tion for the Prix. "Partly that, but partly 
 also, that I may have you for mother-in- 
 law." 
 
 No duke had ever talked in such a fashion 
 to Mrs. Kandy. Barring the Duke of Kin 
 cardine, who, the previous winter, had 
 lounged about New York, no duke had ever 
 talked to her at all, and, as for Kincardine, 
 he had, on meeting her, only said; "Hello," 
 after which he had lounged away. Mala- 
 kofF s treatment was at least more gracious, 
 and graciousness to herself was Mrs. Kan- 
 dy s forte. 
 
 "If you are good to her, I shall feel that 
 I can die in peace," remarked the lady, who, 
 whatever happened, had no intention of 
 doing anything of the kind. 
 
 Malakoff, with equal sincerity, replied: 
 "The dear angel, I will refuse her nothing." 
 
 "Sally has a million dollars," Mrs. Kandy 
 
SALLY S DUKE 59 
 
 threw in, omitting, however, to fill it up with 
 the fact that the million was for life. 
 
 "Devilish thin," thought Malakoff, who 
 thought, too, of backing out. But a million 
 dollars spells five million francs, and that 
 amount he doubted his ability to duplicate. 
 
 "At my death," Mrs. Kandy added, with 
 a candour which she afterward tearfully re 
 gretted, "Sally will have six million more." 
 
 But the contingency, remote to him, lugu 
 brious to her, neither chose to consider 
 further, and presently, after Sally had been 
 summoned, and the non-existent duchy had 
 been placed at her feet, Malakoff took him 
 self off. 
 
 Not far, however, around the corner mere 
 ly to the rue Galilee, where dwelled a Mme. 
 Oppensheim who was his mistress, and who 
 had supported him for years. 
 
 Giselle Oppensheim, born de Beaupre, 
 had been married into the high finance by her 
 people, who were very noble, prodigiously 
 
60 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 proud, and equally poor. Giselle de Beau- 
 pre accepted Oppensheim for money in the 
 same measure that he sought her for place. 
 That was ten years before. Since then, 
 Oppensheim had paid for his aspirations, 
 and, from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint, 
 perhaps most notably in Malakoff, with 
 whom, none the less, he was on the best terms 
 in the world and to whom not infrequently 
 he complained when the third party of this 
 unholy trinity became, as she often did 
 become, particularly waspish. For the lady, 
 imperious to Oppensheim, was wax in the 
 hands of Malakoff, whom she loved with a 
 love that was at once violent, sensual and 
 tender. 
 
 On this evening, after leaving the 
 Kandys , he told her of his venture. 
 
 "It is not the Peru," she swiftly summa 
 rised, when he had cited the dower. "Enfin !" 
 she consoling continued, "you might have 
 done worse. Besides, in marrying an Ameri- 
 
SALLY S DUKE 61 
 
 can, there can be no question of mesal 
 liance." 
 
 That sentiment her race dictated. Oddly, 
 it had never reproached her with the left- 
 handed mesalliance that she had contracted 
 with this man, whose grandfather had been a 
 cheesemonger. But love has its own exten 
 uations. Moreover, while, from the stand 
 point of the old nobility, Malakoff was no 
 body, he yet managed to appear as though 
 the spirit of that nobility were incarnated in 
 him. 
 
 "Tell me," Mme. Oppensheim continued. 
 "In appearance is she better than I?" 
 
 Is the lily fairer than the rose? Sally had 
 the ephemeral charm of the former. She was 
 a book bound in muslin, with all the pages 
 blank. What time and fate would scrawl 
 there, fate and time would tell. As yet they 
 were white. As yet the girl was a lily. 
 Mme. Oppensheim was the rose, large, 
 colourful, majestic. 
 
62 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 At the question, Malakoff looked at her. 
 Her eyes, like his own, were dark. There 
 the resemblance ended. For while he was al 
 most typically Latin, the fainter umber of 
 her skin, and the rich orange of her hair, 
 suggested an alien race. It had been said 
 that she was the souvenir of a caprice which 
 her mother had entertained for an Austrian 
 prince, and as, at the question, Malakoff 
 looked at her, he recalled the story. 
 
 "Bah!" he replied. 
 
 The exclamation sufficed. Besides, Mme. 
 Oppensheim was otherwise assured. Be 
 tween Malakoff and herself subsisted what 
 is called the collage, that glueing of two na 
 tures together which is the result of a long 
 liaison and which, when effected, is the strong 
 est of life s fragile ties. The lady was, there 
 fore, unvisited by any vulgar sense of jeal 
 ousy. In addition, in spite of the collage, or 
 more precisely, because of it, it was necessary 
 that Malakoff should establish himself in a 
 
SALLY S DUKE 63 
 
 manner befitting his rank. The anterior 
 misadventures of the steeplechase had dis 
 appointed her almost as thoroughly as they 
 had him. 
 
 "Very good," she resumed. "I will call 
 on her to-morrow." 
 
 Around the corner, meanwhile, the poetry 
 of the engagement was also being discussed. 
 
 "Of course, my dear," Mrs. Kandy re 
 marked, "some mothers prefer Englishmen 
 for their daughters, but where can they get 
 a duke?" 
 
 Meditatively Sally helped herself from a 
 sac of bon-bons. "I don t see," she replied, 
 "why they should want one at all." 
 
 Mrs. Kandy waved her lorgnette. "That 
 only shows how foolish you are. A duke 
 makes a duchess, and wherever a duchess 
 goes she is It." 
 
 "And I don t love him." 
 
 "On such a short acquaintance it would be 
 most improper if you did. For that matter, 
 
64 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 when I married your father, I did not love 
 him, either, but I admired him, and any girl 
 can admire a duke." 
 
 Sally shook her head. She was thinking 
 of the man with laughing eyes. Thinking, 
 too, of his attentions to Maud Barhyte, a 
 New York girl whom she also knew, and 
 whom she envied greatly. 
 
 "I don t know," she answered at last. 
 
 "But I do," retorted Mrs. Kandy. "Now 
 ring for Perkins and go to bed." 
 
 Sally did ring. A wooden-faced maid 
 appeared. Later, when the woman was 
 brushing the girl s hair, Sally said to 
 her: 
 
 "I am engaged to a duke." 
 
 "Yes, mem." 
 
 Had Sally said she was engaged to a bab 
 oon, the reply would have been the same. 
 Perkins knew her business. It was not for 
 her to manifest any interest in anything con 
 cerning her employers. It was for her to 
 
SALLY S DUKE 65 
 
 attend to her duties. She did attend to them, 
 and attended to them well. 
 
 "But I will keep you, Perkins." 
 
 "Thank you, mem." 
 
 The brushing continued. Presently Per 
 kins said: "If you please, mem, I m to be 
 married too." 
 
 In the mirror before her Sally looked at 
 the woman in whose face there was not a 
 vestige of expression. 
 
 "His name is Arris, mem. He s butler 
 and valet, mem, and been only in the best 
 
 ouses." 
 
 "Harris!" Sally repeated. "Well, per 
 haps, I may take him when I have a house 
 of my own, but you will be Perkins just the 
 
 same." 
 
 "Thank you, mem." 
 
 Such was Sally s wooing. The marriage 
 was equally enchanting. 
 
 Before it occurred, Malakoff, apprised by 
 his avoue of the terms of Sam Kandy s will, 
 
66 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. Had 
 Mrs. Kandy seen him at that moment, she 
 would have been alarmed. Could she have 
 read his thoughts, she would have known 
 that her alarm was justified. 
 
 There was the Due de Chose, who had 
 bagged the booty of despoiled Venezuela; 
 de la Deche, who had got the loot of the 
 wreckage of the railways of the United 
 States; Prince Eugene, the most obscure of 
 the obscurest Napoleonides, who had gob 
 bled the heiress of Monte Carlo s perfumed 
 hell; Solferino, who had pocketed the prize 
 American dot; d Ostende, who had received 
 with his bride a ton of brewery guineas ; and 
 he, Malakoff, who was as good as any of 
 them, was done, done again, and out a beg 
 garly million at that! 
 
 He could still desist, and would have, but 
 an idea occurred to him. It was then that he 
 laughed. 
 
 In accordance with local usage, the civil 
 
SALLY S DUKE 67 
 
 ceremony, which precedes the religious rites, 
 took place at the Mairie of the precinct in 
 which Malakoff resided. The formalities, 
 brief in themselves, became exasperating by 
 reason of a long delay which intervened. 
 
 Afterward, at the Elysee Hotel, Malakoff 
 requested a word with Mrs. Kandy. 
 
 "Madam," he began, when Sally had 
 gone, "in asking the hand of your daughter, 
 I said it was not merely that I might have her 
 for wife, but in order, also, that I might have 
 you for mother-in-law. Do you recall it?" 
 
 Mrs. Kandy, laced to the point of suf 
 focation, wished that he would hurry and 
 go. But, manfully, from a red and gilt 
 armchair in which she squirmed, she 
 smiled. 
 
 "I do, indeed. I thought it very gracious." 
 
 Malakoff smiled also that smile in which 
 the eyes have no part, and which consists in 
 showing the teeth. 
 
 "You are most amiable. But at the time 
 
68 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 I hardly supposed you would leave me in 
 the cold." 
 
 "In the cold!" Mrs. Kandy, shifting un 
 easily, repeated. 
 
 "In the street, if you prefer. For that is 
 what it amounts to. You told me that your 
 daughter has a million. It is true. But the 
 income only. That is insufficient." 
 
 Mrs. Kandy raised her lorgnette. "But 
 you knew this before. Mr. Ridgeway " 
 
 Malakoff bowed. "That is also true. 
 This Ridgeway, your lawyer, acquainted my 
 man of business with the facts. But enam 
 oured as I was, and am of your daughter, I 
 did not sufficiently consider them. This 
 morning, during the delay which I regret 
 you should have experienced at the Mairie, 
 I had the fullest opportunity to do so, and 
 I have concluded to proceed no further." 
 
 "What!" 
 
 Malakoff plucked at his beard. "I have 
 concluded not to marry your daughter." 
 
SALLY S DUKE 69 
 
 At the outrageousness of that, Mrs. Kan- 
 dy forgot her stays. She realised only that 
 she was the mother of a duchess, the potential 
 grandmother of a prince, and dismissing 
 grammar, she cried: "But you are; you 
 have." 
 
 Malakoff looked at her much as though 
 she were a wriggling worm, and it was with 
 utter indifference to her anguish that he an 
 swered: "Not by the Church, and in my 
 world it is only the religious ceremony that 
 counts." 
 
 "And you mean to say!" Mrs. Kandy 
 screamed. Then, English failing, she soared 
 into French. "Mais, c est indigne! You 
 leave my child neither fish, flesh nor fowl." 
 
 Malakoff caught the statement and with 
 a shrug of his shoulders tossed it back. 
 
 "It is only what you leave me. In the 
 Americas, I am aware, matters arrange 
 themselves otherwise. There a man may 
 work. I believe a man is even expected to. 
 
70 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Here it is different. A man, such as I am 
 at least, not only is not expected to work, 
 but would not be tolerated if he tried. Im 
 agine to yourself the Due de Malakoff, gro 
 cer, stockbroker even! Alors, quoi?" 
 
 From purple, Mrs. Kandy turned livid. 
 
 "I shall appeal to the embassy. I will 
 send for my lawyer!" 
 
 Malakoff took up his hat. "I earnestly 
 recommend you to do both. Meanwhile 
 favour me by conveying my homage to 
 your daughter. I have had the honour to bid 
 you good-day." 
 
 But when he had gone, and Mrs. Kandy 
 had loosened her stays, she felt better and 
 thought better, at least of one of her threats. 
 The embassy could do nothing. To appeal 
 there would be but to bill the whole ridicu 
 lous story to all the cynical world. She 
 telephoned instead to Ridgeway, who shortly 
 was announced. 
 
 Mr. Ridgeway s mouth was full of gold 
 
SALLY S DUKE 7! 
 
 teeth. While listening to her tale, he exhib 
 ited them very freely. He was thinking 
 what an amazing fool she was. 
 
 "Of course/ he said at last, placing as he 
 spoke a forefinger in the middle of his fore 
 head, "the marriage has not been consumma 
 ted, and an action to nullify the contract can 
 be brought. Even otherwise, the attitude 
 of this gentleman has been foreseen. It 
 constitutes what the Code terms a sevice 
 grave, and a divorce can be had. But any 
 proceedings in the matter will cause a 
 scandal, one that unfortunately will re 
 flect on your daughter. Now it is 
 evident that this gentleman wants money. 
 They all do, the majority of the aristos 
 that is, and they rarely marry unless 
 they get it. My advice is, give it to 
 him. Probably a hundred thousand francs 
 will suffice. I will see his avoue and let 
 you know." 
 
 "It is outrageous," said Mrs. Kandy, snif- 
 
72 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 fling and snuffing at a vinaigrette. "No 
 lady was ever so treated." 
 
 Mrs. Kandy was then in a loose flowing 
 robe, tenderly pink, which lace befluttered. 
 In spite of her plaint, she felt better. 
 
 The relief was transient. Mr. Bidgeway 
 on visiting Malakoff s attorney found that a 
 hundred thousand was a mere fraction of the 
 amount required. Malakoff demanded five 
 million francs. 
 
 When these figures were recited to Mrs. 
 Kandy, instantly the woman in that tender 
 gown was ousted by a female. She grimaced 
 queerly. Epilepsy of the epiglottis attacked 
 her. Instead of employing the language of 
 the ornate, she dropped into that of the fish 
 wife. 
 
 "Pay a man a million dollars to sleep with 
 my daughter! Never!" 
 
 Never is a long word. Before the inter 
 view was concluded, she decided to do 
 so. 
 
SALLY S DUKE 73 
 
 "I am ruining myself," she sobbed. 
 
 "It is very noble of you," said Mr. Ridge- 
 way, who, for that remark of his, and for 
 that other of hers, charged extra. 
 
n 
 
 A LITTLE TOKEN 
 
 When the five million francs had been paid 
 and Sally Kandy became definitely Sally 
 Malakoff, an act interrelated with the drama 
 of her life was occurring in New York. 
 
 There in the library of a large house, situ 
 ated in that part of Madison avenue, which, 
 with Gramercy Park, still represents what 
 residential New York used to be, a man was 
 talking to a girl. 
 
 The man was Welden, the girl was Maud 
 Barhyte. She was standing. He was seat 
 ed. 
 
 Beside him was a table on which was an 
 Oxford edition, in Greek, of the old Sicilian 
 poets. At the moment, it was the only book 
 that the library contained. Opposite was a 
 
A LITTLE TOKEN 75 
 
 mantel, above it, a mirror. To the right was 
 a piano, at the left a sofa. On the walls were 
 pictures of former Barhytes, women with 
 pointed bodices and powdered hair; men in 
 vermilion with swords and lace jabots. In 
 addition to the book, the table had on it a 
 buvard, an elaborate service for writing, and 
 a jewelled bag of gold mesh, which the girl 
 had put down. 
 
 A little before, letting herself in with a 
 latch-key, as was her custom, she had come 
 from a drive. She wore a costume of light 
 cloth, faintly blue, exquisitely embroidered. 
 Beneath was silk and mousseline de soie, less 
 durable, and more costly than the garment. 
 On her head was a hat for which she had 
 been charged eighty dollars. She had worn 
 it once before, and might wear it once 
 again. 
 
 The girl was not on that account a fool. 
 She read Plato in the original, and what is 
 less lovely and more difficult, she read Kant. 
 
76 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 What is unusual, she thought; what is ex 
 ceptional, she meditated; what is remark 
 able, she prayed. 
 
 She prayed that she might do nothing that 
 should not charm, say nothing that should 
 not please. 
 
 Generally the prayer was granted, and 
 sometimes more fully than she wished. Men 
 on first meeting her forgot that they were 
 conventional beings, and remembered that 
 they were men. 
 
 "That ought not to be allowed," the wit 
 of a ball-room had remarked, when in shim 
 mering white, this girl had passed. For in 
 her eyes that were violet, in the rich orange 
 of her hair, in the contour of her lips, that 
 seemed meeting for love, in the oval of her 
 perfect face, and in her figure that pulsated 
 with health and with life, there was a charm 
 too alluring, almost aphrodisiac. 
 
 Of the emotions that it aroused, the girl 
 was aware. It mortified her extremely, and 
 
A LITTLE TOKEN 77 
 
 through her demeanour she tried to attenuate 
 it. But from her voice, which was naturally 
 low, she could not always banish caresses. 
 She could not always eliminate the incan 
 descence from her eyes. The more demure 
 she tried to appear, the more desirable she 
 became. Her prayer was, perhaps, only too 
 fully granted. 
 
 Now, on this late mid- April afternoon, 
 there came through the open windows the 
 surrenders of spring, and the metallic roar 
 of the city. 
 
 "If you won t marry me, tell me why?" 
 Welden was saying. 
 
 With that air of being somebody which 
 certain New Yorkers occasionally attain, he 
 sat, supple and vigorous, looking hungrily 
 at her. The hunger, a hunger for her, for a 
 year and a day he had tried to appease, but 
 hitherto quite vainly. 
 
 In and about the girl s lips a smile hov 
 ered deliciously. 
 
78 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Supposing you wearied of me, what 
 then?" 
 
 Welden laughed. "I never could." 
 
 The hovering smile fluttered and fled. 
 "Supposing, then, I wearied of you!" 
 
 Welden laughed again. "I would not let 
 
 you." 
 
 To that, the girl, with a movement of her 
 head, assented. 
 
 "Perhaps. But does it not rather seem 
 that affection is a thing which cannot be com 
 manded? It seems so to me. It seems to 
 me that it commands us. It seems to me too, 
 that, the quantity being limited, some day it 
 must give out. When it does, love ends. No 
 effort can prevent it." 
 
 Welden nodded. "Some day, yes. But 
 a hundred years with you would be insuffi 
 cient for me. I could love you all through 
 this life, and all through another." 
 
 The smile which momentarily had gone 
 from the girl, rejoined her. 
 
A LITTLE TOKEN 79 
 
 " In seternum te adorabo, " she quoted. 
 "I know. I have heard it before. I have 
 heard it said by people who, when I next 
 heard of them, were applying for a divorce. 
 I heard Rivers swear it to Beatrix Leroy. 
 Where are they now?" 
 
 "In the hands of their lawyers, I believe." 
 
 "Yet, almost the day before yesterday, 
 they were apparently mad about each other, 
 quite as much as we are, and probably more. 
 Now, as you put it, they are in the hands of 
 their lawyers. Then there are, or were, the 
 Cottings, the Colvilles, the Methuens, the 
 Lennox Joneses. Where are they?" 
 
 "In the same box, I suppose. But what 
 of it? What have their various deviltries to 
 do with us?" 
 
 "Everything. We might get in the same 
 box ourselves." 
 
 "Ce n est pas la mer a boire," Welden 
 lapsing into French, as certain New Yorkers 
 sometimes will, replied. 
 
80 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Again the girl assented. "For a man, 
 certainly not. But for a woman, it rather 
 proclaims the fact that she has put her love 
 and life into the hands of an individual who 
 has destroyed the one and ruined the other. 
 Women endure much, and I could endure 
 that on condition, however, that I alone were 
 aware of it. But, to have it known, printed, 
 discussed; to have my private misfortunes 
 public property, no, I would rather " 
 
 The girl hesitated as though at loss for a 
 simile. Before she could find one, provided, 
 that is, she wanted to, Welden cut in. 
 
 "But, Maud, are you not putting the til 
 bury before the tandem? That people do 
 get divorces is obvious and in the majority 
 of cases the reason is obvious also. Men 
 here, as a rule, marry too young. They mar 
 ry because they cannot decently get the girl 
 otherwise, and as they afterward discover, 
 it is not the girl, but a girl that they have got. 
 To me, you are not a girl; you are the 
 
A LITTLE TOKEN 81 
 
 girl, the one girl in the whole wide world." 
 Maud looked the matter over as it reached 
 her, and indicated the flaw in it with a smile. 
 "We are taught that experience teaches, 
 and I may suppose that you have had yours, 
 many experiences, I dare say. In that case, 
 you have had a liberal education, which I 
 have lacked. Your experiences have quali 
 fied you as an expert, and it is as such that 
 you are able to decide that I am the one girl 
 in the world for you. That is very gratify 
 ing. But what is there to enable me to deter 
 mine that you are the one man? You may 
 be. Probably you are. But how can I tell? 
 How can I?" 
 
 Sagaciously Welden answered: "Try 
 
 me." 
 
 Maud turned away, and with her two 
 hands made a pass in the air. It was as 
 though in some rite known but to herself, 
 she were interrogating the invisible lap of 
 the indifferent gods. 
 
82 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Then, looking suddenly at him, she ex 
 claimed: "I have a great mind to." 
 
 In spite of a gesture meant to stay him, 
 Welden sprang at the girl, caught her in 
 his arms, and pressing his lips to hers-, so 
 hent her with the embrace, that she fell back 
 ward on the sofa. 
 
 At once, freeing herself, she pushed him 
 away. 
 
 "Oblige me by sitting where you were." 
 
 As she spoke, she went to the mirror, re 
 adjusted her hat, patted her frock. These 
 operations concluded, she turned again. 
 
 "We may as well say that we are engaged. 
 In that manner we can be together whenever 
 we like. Come to dinner to-morrow. I will 
 speak to my father to-night,you can speak to 
 him then." 
 
 She moved back. "Don t kiss me here. 
 Don t. Now you must go. I have to dress." 
 
 Welden passed from the library into a 
 reception room which adjoined it, and from 
 
A LITTLE TOKEN 83 
 
 there to the marble flagging of the hall. 
 
 Near the entrance stood a man, an old 
 family servant who had known Welden 
 throughout the year and the day of the siege 
 and who now handed him his hat and stick. 
 
 Welden, considering him with laughing 
 eyes, fumbled in his waistcoat and said: 
 
 "William, put that in your pocket and 
 don t be surprised if you hear any news." 
 
 "Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Wel 
 den," the man answered knowingly. "I 
 shan t be surprised; no, sir." 
 
 Opening the door, he held it open until 
 Welden reached the street. 
 
 That night, when some guests had gone, 
 Maud spoke, as she said she would speak, to 
 her father. They were in the drawing-room 
 which, after a New York fashion of long 
 ago, was frescoed, furnished in yellow and 
 black, fitted with enormous mirrors and with 
 chandeliers almost as big, equally ancient. 
 
 "I am engaged to Gerard Welden." 
 
84 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 General Barhyte, who had taken up an 
 evening paper, put it down and removed his 
 glasses. He had bushy white hair, a white 
 cavalry moustache, and a fierce red face 
 which suddenly could become indulgent. 
 
 It became so then. The Weldens had 
 been identified with New York as long as 
 the Barhytes, possibly longer. Welden him 
 self represented all that was locally desirable 
 in addition to the fact that he was personally 
 agreeable, pleasant to the eye, liked by men, 
 admired by women, a man of means, an 
 M. F. H., President of the Swordsmen Club. 
 
 These items considered, the general re 
 placed his glasses and looked up at his 
 daughter. 
 
 "He is not in business, is he?" 
 
 Maud, who had been standing, seated her 
 self on an S in upholstery. 
 
 "Well? And you? You are not either." 
 
 For a moment the general considered the 
 point. "That s another story. I think now- 
 
A LITTLE TOKEN 85 
 
 adays a man should have some occupation." 
 
 Maud smiled, displaying the nacre of her 
 teeth. "So do I. He will have me. It will 
 be enough for him." 
 
 "Or for anybody," laughed the general. 
 "When is it to be?" 
 
 "When is what to be?" 
 
 "Why, God bless my soul, the wedding, 
 of course." 
 
 From under the girl s skirt a white slip 
 per, butterflied with gold, moved in and out. 
 
 "Oh, not for a long time yet." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because." 
 
 The general laughed again. "That is the 
 best reason in the world. Well, puss, you 
 have my consent and your mother s money. 
 You have been a good girl and I hope to God 
 that you will be happy. He means to say a 
 word to me, doesn t he?" 
 
 Maud stood up. "To-morrow. I have 
 asked him to dinner." 
 
86 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 General Barhyte, gathering again the 
 evening paper, nodded. The match was 
 everything he could wish. The more he con 
 sidered it, the more he was pleased. 
 
 The following evening, when Maud had 
 left the table and Welden had said the prom 
 ised word, that pleasure he expressed. 
 
 "I hope," he added, "that after you are 
 married you will be willing to live here. 
 Why, God bless my soul, the house is big 
 enough for a dozen of you. I always break 
 fast in my rooms, usually I have luncheon at 
 the Athenaeum, and I have always wanted 
 to dine there." 
 
 "You are very kind, General," Welden, 
 sitting, smiling and supple, before him, re 
 plied. "Personally I shall like nothing bet 
 ter, particularly as my own house has gone 
 the way the rest of New York will go en 
 gulfed by office buildings and department 
 stores." 
 
 "Yes, yes. They are making the town im- 
 
A LITTLE TOKEN 87 
 
 possible. God bless my soul, if I did not 
 know better, I should think I was in Chi 
 cago. But there is Maud looking in. Don t 
 let me detain you." 
 
 Welden stood up, shook hands with the 
 old gentleman, thanked him again, and fol 
 lowed the girl into the faded splendours of 
 the drawing-room. 
 
 "I have something for you," she an 
 nounced. 
 
 From a little box she took a sapphire, flat 
 and oblong. About it was a thin gold band 
 and at one end a clasp. On the band was 
 engraved: Aultre n auray. 
 
 " None but you, " she translated as he 
 examined the device which, long ago, a girl 
 wove for a king. 
 
 "Now," she resumed, "if you will put that 
 on the stem of your watch, it will not be of 
 fensive, will it?" 
 
 "On the contrary. But how odd!" 
 
 "I meant it to be. It is a token between 
 
88 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 us. If you ever change your mind, do not 
 let me see that you have and do not tell me. 
 Send this to me." 
 
 "It will go with me to my grave," Welden 
 answered. 
 
 Drawing her to him, he kissed her, longly 
 at first, then so penetratingly that the least 
 pulses of her being shook. 
 
 Slowly, in her low, caressing voice, the girl 
 said to him: "Dearest, I adore you." 
 
Ill 
 
 A LITTLE LOVE 
 
 In the way we live now, the income de 
 rived from two million dollars is better than 
 nothing, but, for a duke and a duchess, it is 
 little more. Yet in Paris, provided one 
 know, money may be made to do double the 
 duty that it can effect elsewhere. 
 
 Malakoff did know. The last price of 
 anything, the real value of no matter what, 
 he thoroughly understood. It was a boast 
 of his that no one could do him, and apart 
 from the welshings in the steeplechase, it is 
 probable that he had never been jockeyed in 
 his life. On the perhaps meagre income he 
 succeeded, consequently, in setting up an es 
 tablishment which, if not princely, was not 
 
90 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 bourgeois. He succeeded even in setting up 
 two of them, one at Deauville for the villeg- 
 iatura, another for town life in the Avenue 
 Malakoff "my avenue," as he, with what 
 perhaps was pardonable pride, described it. 
 
 The house there or, to speak French, the 
 hotel, had been obtained at a rental relative 
 ly low. Situated between court and garden, 
 it had a vanilla frontage, variegated at the 
 windows by a touch of green, at the balcony 
 by another of pink, which gave it vaguely the 
 appearance of a Neapolitan ice. 
 
 Sally did not take to it nor did she take 
 to her existence there. In the unholy rites of 
 the marriage, each one of which had set a 
 separate mark upon her, she felt cheated of 
 her girlhood and, in this house, she felt 
 cheated, too, of happiness and love. Many 
 are without suspecting it, many others cheat 
 themselves. But Sally had been thrown 
 blindfolded into the arms of a man who did 
 not care for her, who did not want to care 
 
A LITTLE LOVE 91 
 
 for her, and she had been so thrown for no 
 other earthly reason than that a stupid 
 woman might be related to a duke. Sally 
 hated her mother for it with a hatred which 
 equalled, when it did not exceed, the loathing 
 which she felt for her husband. 
 
 Ordinarily the results of a husband s in- 
 considerateness are but temporary. Given 
 but time and the bride forgets and forgives, 
 and Sally, who was not only shallow, but, 
 like all shallow people, impulsive, might 
 have ended by loving the man whom she 
 loathed, had not his inconsiderateness been 
 succeeded by defection. Barely a wife, she 
 ceased to be one, and that, while distinctly 
 a blessing, aborted the possibility of any 
 thing further between them, anything, that 
 is, except indifference on his part and an 
 tipathy on hers. 
 
 Her thoughts at this time were not, there 
 fore, very gay, and their lack of gaiety was 
 complicated by the fact that she had not 
 
92 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 many of them. But she found compensa 
 tions, among these a curious one in Mme. 
 Oppensheim, who, for obvious reasons, had 
 determined that Sally should like her, and 
 who succeeded in that which, other things 
 being equal, would have been an impossible 
 task. Sally did like her, or perhaps it will 
 be more exact to say that she relished the at 
 tentions shown her by this woman of the 
 world, who, not content with being merely 
 gracious to an inexperienced American, took 
 the trouble to form her, to teach her the tone, 
 the ways and manners of the Parisian, in 
 particular that desir de plaire which gives to 
 the speech and bearing of the mondaine her 
 untranslatable charm. 
 
 Sally at first was necessarily unaware of 
 the relations that existed between this woman 
 and Malakoff. When she was better in 
 formed, as she promptly became, she felt 
 grateful to her for standing between them. 
 
 The gratitude was very feline. Though 
 
r A LITTLE LOVE 93 
 
 Sally purred, she could scratch. But mean 
 while discovering, moreover, as she also did, 
 that in the special world in which she moved, 
 the situation, far from being exceptional, 
 was the reverse, she felt not merely grateful 
 but Parisian, and in that state of advance 
 ment, dispensed both with the sense of dig 
 nity which should be natural to the married 
 woman, and with the sense of morality which 
 usually is instinctive in the young. 
 
 Incidentally it amused her to be duchess. 
 She was glad to be rid of her mother. She 
 liked to drive without her, and view land 
 scapes of modes. Moreover, in the Avenue 
 Malakoff, she received detachments from 
 what is called All-Paris the glittering and 
 rakish ship of fashion, in which the distaff- 
 side of the Faubourg Saint-Germain does 
 not always deign to sail. But though the 
 feminine portion of the old nobility has its 
 reserves, the men are less punctilious and 
 even otherwise there are always others quite 
 
94 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 as agreeable and frequently more so, the 
 cosmopolitan leaders of life and sport, who 
 nowhere else are as enterprising. Of these, 
 many made up to her, a circumstance of 
 which, quaintly enough, she complained to 
 Mme. Oppensheim. 
 
 "But, ma toute belle," the latter remon 
 strated. "When a man delays more than 
 fifteen minutes in making up to me, I regard 
 him as insulting." 
 
 "You are so beautiful," Sally replied. 
 But she thought her simply fantastic, and 
 that not through any straight-lacedness, but 
 because she did not yet understand how a 
 woman can permit any man, save the man 
 of all men, to attempt an approach however 
 circuitous, to the heart s tender places. In 
 that respect, Malakoff s treatment of her 
 had been beneficial, and while in the anti 
 pathy incited, it had necessarily failed to re 
 veal what love may be, none the less it had 
 suggested possibilities which were then ac- 
 
A LITTLE LOVE 95 
 
 centuated by Welden s presence in Paris. 
 
 Prior to her marriage, she had fancied her 
 self in love with him. Now, in looking hack, 
 she realised that she had not known the 
 meaning of the word. It still held its secrets, 
 mysteries unrevealed, the esoteric love of a 
 doctrine which only life can impart, only life 
 and a lover. But the latter term had also its 
 shadings, between which Sally wavered, not 
 through any loyalty to Malakoff, she owed 
 him none; nor through any loyalty to her 
 self, she was unaware that she owed any, but 
 because Welden was an inaccessible person. 
 
 At a five-o clock in that amiable region 
 which is known as the American colony, 
 Sally made him such little tentative advan 
 ces as a woman may. Agilely he extracted 
 himself from her ambuscades. Ordinarily, 
 he might have stormed them. That would 
 have been only civil. But what ordinarily 
 would have been civil, in this instance, would 
 have been base. He was bound by bonds 
 
96 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 that to certain natures are the strongest of 
 all. Apart from which he had no desire to 
 encourage Sally. Maud left him none. 
 
 A fortnight after the episode of the little 
 token, the girl and her father sailed for Paris. 
 Welden accompanied them and it was in 
 Paris that the consummation of the agree 
 ment occurred. 
 
 Previously the matter was somewhat de 
 bated. Maud Barhyte knew many things, 
 among others, that once upon a time it had 
 been heretical to think, heretical, also, to love. 
 She knew, furthermore, that since then prog 
 ress had liberated thought without, however, 
 completely emancipating the heart. But, 
 she had argued, the right to think and the 
 right to love being both fundamental in hu 
 man nature, one is as clear as the other, and 
 while, to the bigot, any freedom in love may 
 be heretical still, none the less, such liberty is 
 permissible, provided the appearances are 
 preserved, and no one else is injured. 
 
A LITTLE LOVE 97 
 
 These views she put before Welden. 
 Their fallacy was patent to him. For while 
 the whole moral value of marriage may sub 
 sist in a union which is contracted solely in 
 the consciences of those who enter into it, 
 and while such a union may not only present 
 but preserve the entire and eternal law of 
 Right, yet, when such a union is contracted 
 in conditions such as? theirs, there is an in 
 jury to others. There is an injury, though 
 it be but potential, to the unborn. There is 
 a further injury, and a grave one, to the 
 woman, often, also, to the man. A woman 
 is never completely woman except in the 
 family, and there can be no family once 
 certain conventions are contravened. These 
 conventions, which jurists did not invent, or 
 codes originate, are exterior to woman, su 
 perior to man, and, when disregarded, inimi 
 cal to both of them. 
 
 But, though the fallacy of the girl s views 
 was patent to Welden, the fallacy of refut- 
 
98 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 ing them was patent as well. The rare gifts 
 of the gods should be piously accepted, never 
 refused. Apart from which, in the way we 
 live now, men of the world do not recite 
 moral maxims after the manner of Confu 
 cius. Welden was too modern for that, and 
 incidentally too hungry. But he saved his 
 conscience. 
 
 "Your views," he declared, "are as ador 
 able as they are advanced; but they would 
 be still more adorable were they antiquated 
 enough to induce you to marry me." 
 
 "Dearest," she replied, "have we not been 
 all over that?" 
 
 They had indeed. At the time they were 
 in New York. In the after joy which love 
 and life in Paris brought, neither, between 
 them, could have discovered a regret, the 
 vain desire merely that it should never end, 
 never! and in a world where all things must 
 and do. 
 
 Meanwhile felicity was theirs, one so full, 
 
A LITTLE LOVE 99 
 
 so absorbing, so intense and eager that some 
 times from their commingled breath, rose the 
 deceiving image of felicities larger and more 
 fair. Sometimes, from the fountain of de 
 light, a clear jet falling in drizzling sheaves, 
 shook stars in their eyes and ears. Some 
 times the pulsations of love swept over them 
 like tides. Sometimes the waters lifted them, 
 sank them, lowered them deeper, caught, car 
 ried and drifted them, hour long, unap- 
 peasably, from night to dawn. Once, 
 from the mysterious affinities that similar- 
 ise the flesh and spirit, a fear seemed to 
 mount and warn of a catastrophe unknown, 
 yet near. 
 
 The latter impression, wholly momentary 
 and immediately forgot, came later. At the 
 time being, their clear sky was cloudless. In 
 termediately, for general convenience, they 
 were but another engaged couple, and it 
 was by the simple expedient of announcing 
 the engagement that Welden, at a five- 
 
100 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 o clock in the Avenue Marceau, extricated 
 himself from Sally s ambuscades. 
 
 "To Maud Barhyte!" exclaimed Sally, 
 who certainly took her defeat very well, "how 
 perfectly dear! I was thinking of her only 
 the other day." 
 
 Sally, like her mother, sometimes spoke 
 truly. In this instance, what she said was 
 exact. She had been thinking of a resem 
 blance that existed between Mme. Oppen- 
 sheim and Maud. 
 
 "Where is she?" she continued. "And 
 where are you? I want you both to dinner." 
 
 "Thank you," Welden replied. "Maud 
 is at the Mirifique, in the rue de la Paix, 
 and I am across the street." 
 
 "How nice and convenient that is. Well, 
 tell her with my love, that I am coming to 
 see her at once." 
 
 Sally smiled and nodded and turned. 
 "Bonjour, Madame de Chose!" she said to 
 a woman. "Bonjour, Prince!" she repeated 
 
A LITTLE LOVE 101 
 
 to a man. "How sweet youU06& v Pinkey !" 
 she added to a girl. "BonjourJ E^iijjoo.r!" 
 
 Sally certainly took her defeat very well. 
 In the crowded salons of Mrs. Cawtree, her 
 hostess, a New Yorker who had lived so 
 long in Paris, that she was unaware how 
 Parisian New York has become; in the spa 
 cious and peopled rooms she looked far more 
 victorious than vanquished, and incidentally 
 very sweet. "But too animated," Mrs. Caw- 
 tree, to whom such attenuations were pleas 
 ing, afterward declared. 
 
 Welden fell back and away. Presently in 
 a motor-cab he was sailing down the Champs 
 Elysees, and on to the Cercle de TEscrime, 
 a fencing club, of which he was a member, 
 where, when in Paris, he usually went for 
 a bout each day. 
 
 The bout served a double purpose. It 
 combined practice and pleasure. It did 
 more. It helped to keep him in that condi 
 tion of supple vigour which it is the mere 
 
102 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 duty of ah idler and particularly of a lover 
 :to maintain. To this condition other causes 
 were contributory. He had a hack for the 
 Bois and near Longchamp he kept a hunter, 
 one that he had bought, not indeed for any 
 immediate sport, but for future runs on 
 Long Island. This horse, Irish by birth, 
 and Blazes by name, was strong enough to 
 carry a house. He had short legs, a short 
 back, prodigious quarters, shoulders like the 
 top of a haystack, and an impudent eye. 
 He had cost a pretty figure, but Welden, 
 who knew as much about horses as any one 
 can, except a vet., felt that he had got him 
 cheap, and to his Longchamp groom, a 
 middle-aged, weasel-faced man, he gave 
 these simple and sound instructions : "Mind 
 you, now, plenty of oats and plenty of 
 work." 
 
 On this afternoon, in the salle d armes, 
 he found, among other members, Louis Le 
 Hillel,a Franco- American, to whom, through 
 
A LITTLE LOVE 103 
 
 his grandmother, he was vaguely related, 
 and with whom he had long been on terms 
 of agreeable, though not oppressive, inti 
 macy. Le Hillel had the face of a prelate, 
 the manners of a debutante, and a wildcat s 
 fearless agility. 
 
 After a bout with him, after a shower 
 bath, and after dressing for the evening in 
 the club, as is customary there, Welden 
 sailed away in another cab to dine with Maud 
 and her father. 
 
 The Mirifique, where they lodged, had 
 been considered smart in the days of Bal 
 zac s beaux, and that distinction it had con 
 trived to maintain. But then it had not 
 succumbed to the general teutonising of such 
 places. The management was not German, 
 the servants were not Swiss, the chef was a 
 chef. Though situated on that most cosmo 
 politan of streets, which the rue de la Paix 
 is, it remained really Parisian. Guests 
 there were not considered fit merely to be 
 
104 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 robbed, but patrons to be pleased. Mainly 
 these patrons were Russians, than which, in 
 the managerial eye, there is nothing superior, 
 save only those appertaining to some 
 grrande famille Americaine, for that is the 
 ideal, and that is what the Barhytes were. 
 
 The suite which they occupied was on 
 what Italians call the noble floor, and which 
 the French, less translatably, describe as the 
 first above. It gave on the street, and con 
 sisted of a vestibule, a frescoed salon, a tap 
 estried dining-hall, and the usual sleeping 
 rooms. The general s quarters, and those of 
 his daughter, were separated by the dining 
 room and salon. But Maud s had that which 
 the general s lacked, a private entrance. It 
 gave on a stairway at the rear, and though 
 it was supposed to be used only by Maud s 
 maid, Maud herself made use of it when re 
 turning unduly from Welden. 
 
 When he entered that evening, there was 
 mounting from the street its odour of ver- 
 
A LITTLE LOVE 105 
 
 bena and absinthe. Following that, were 
 the cries of the hawkers who are never still. 
 Then at once there was a waiter announcing 
 dinner. 
 
 Already Welden had been greeted by the 
 general. For a moment he had held Maud s 
 hand in his. Slender, white and very cool, 
 it burned him. The contour of her figure 
 and her too alluring looks, burned him still 
 more. At the pressure of his hand on hers, 
 she, too, must have burned. A faint flame 
 leaped to her face, coloured it charmingly, 
 and sank slowly away. 
 
 "And where, may one inquire, have you 
 been?" she asked, with that clinging intona 
 tion of hers, which was a caress in itself, 
 and which lent to her simplest words the ef 
 fect of a kiss. "We rather fancied that we 
 should see you." 
 
 "So we did," said the general. "But din 
 ner appears to be ready. Welden, will you 
 take Maud out?" 
 
106 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "I have been talking to a friend of yours," 
 Welden presently remarked, unfolding, as 
 he spoke, a beautifully folded napkin. 
 "Sugar Candy, she wants us to dine." 
 
 "That is Sam Kandy s daughter, isn t 
 it?" the general interjected. "Let me see, 
 she married " 
 
 "A very good looking man, I hear," Maud 
 answered. "Have you met him?" she asked, 
 turning to Welden. 
 
 "That reminds me, Maud," the general 
 ran on. "At the Visitors Club to-day, a 
 Frenchman, a painter, was introduced to 
 me. It appears that he has seen you some 
 where. God bless my soul! What an ex 
 travagant mood you put him in! He wants 
 to paint your portrait and he says that if he 
 may, it will be the clou what do you call it 
 in English the success? Yes, the success 
 of the Salon. A most extravagant chap. 
 It was Colonel Floyd who introduced him. 
 By the way, Floyd wants us to go to Fras- 
 
A LITTLE LOVE 107 
 
 cati s. He is to be there for July and he 
 says " 
 
 "Frascati s at Havre?" said Maud. 
 
 "Yes, where else should it be? Now how 
 devilish good that fish is, isn t it? They do 
 do you well here, don t they? Floyd says " 
 
 The general rambled on. Dishes perfect 
 ly cooked, perfectly served, succeeded each 
 other. Coffee came. Finally the general 
 stood up. 
 
 "Welden," he said, "don t let me disturb 
 you. Stop and keep Maud company." 
 
 He turned to the girl. "I have an engage 
 ment with Floyd. Shall you be up when I 
 return?" 
 
 "AJh! that depends." 
 
 "God bless my soul! Of course it does. 
 I hardly believe I shall be late, though. 
 Good night, Welden." 
 
 The old gentleman passed on and out, 
 wondering a little, as he occasionally did, 
 why, as yet, no date had been set for the 
 
108 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 wedding. Had he known, apoplexy would 
 have seized him. But he did not know, and 
 fortunately never learned. Fortunately for 
 us all there are mysteries that we never elu 
 cidate. In its inscrutable ways the Inscru 
 table is beneficent. 
 
IV 
 A LITTLE FRISK 
 
 The multiple brilliancies of the table were 
 punctuated by goblets which lackeys in silk 
 stockings, knee breeches and the saffron liv 
 eries of the Malakoffs replenished with 
 gloved hands. A maitre d hotel, after pre 
 senting a sturgeon from the Volga, was su 
 pervising its service. Through the hum of 
 talk, the tinkle of silver on Sevres, above 
 the glittering table, rose the rich voice of the 
 duke. 
 
 At his right was Mme. de Solferino, gor 
 geous and golden. At his left was Mme. de 
 Cerisy, a massive brunette, outwardly at 
 tentive, but inwardly blaspheming. Next 
 to her was de Dol, a sportsman with racing 
 stables at Chantilly. Farther down was 
 
110 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Welden. Opposite de Dol was Aquaviva, 
 an Italian, master of the Roman hunt. At 
 his right sat Maud. Beyond, at the other 
 end of the table, was Sally, a Turkish legate 
 on one side, a Russian prince on the other. 
 
 Between Sally and Malakoff, were eight 
 other guests, or sixteen in all, a number rela 
 tively restricted, but, afterward, there was 
 to be a sauterie, a little frisk, to which a 
 hundred more were coming. 
 
 Mme. de Cerisy, outwardly smiling, but 
 inwardly cursing her couturiere, wore a con 
 fection that matched her name. It did not 
 do and the consciousness that it did not was 
 increased doubly, first by the glitter of Mme. 
 de Solferino, again by the picture presented 
 by Maud, who, with the ivory of her neck 
 and arms, the rich orange of her hair, her 
 incandescent eyes and too alluring looks, 
 seemed a dream and a despair. 
 
 Malakoff, turning from Mme. de Cerisy 
 to her, moistened his lips. 
 
A LITTLE FRISK 111 
 
 To annoy him, Mme. de Cerisy remarked: 
 "Giselle Oppensheim is not with us to 
 night." 
 
 "Unfortunately no," he answered. "She 
 was awaited elsewhere." 
 
 It was a fortnight after the episode at 
 Mrs. Cawtree s. On the afternoon that fol 
 lowed the little skirmish, Sally called at the 
 Mirifique, and finding Maud at home, em 
 braced her, congratulated her, and asked her 
 and Welden to dinner, an invitation which 
 she later reinforced hy another, begging 
 both to come to her at Deauville, from the 
 third to the tenth of July. The two bids had 
 been jointly accepted, and it was in response 
 to the first, that Maud and Welden were 
 then dining at her house. 
 
 At the moment, Malakoff was addressing 
 himself to Maud. Welden could not hear 
 what he said, but in spite of intervening can 
 delabra, he could see the girl s face. She was 
 smiling, apparently amused. 
 
112 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Welden felt no jealousy, nothing but the 
 calm of invincible possession, and, as he ate 
 of farcied truffles, which had just been 
 served, and drank the blonde wine with 
 which his glass was constantly replenished, 
 he told himself that in a few hours the girl 
 would be in his arms. 
 
 Some vibration of the thought must have 
 reached Sally. Leaning forward, she called 
 at him. 
 
 "Isn t she radiant? In New York she 
 was exquisite, here she is exquisite and radi 
 ant besides. What has done it? Is it love? 
 Is it? Ah, alors! Qui done m apprendra 
 ce que c est que 1 amour?" 
 
 With that, a nod and a ripple of 
 laughter, Sally turned to Cantire, an 
 under secretary of the British Em 
 bassy, a boy with pink cheeks and fair 
 hair. 
 
 The dinner proceeded. Courses succeeded 
 each other. Sweets came and went. Sol- 
 
A LITTLE FRISK 113 
 
 emnly the butler approached Sally and 
 muttered at her. 
 
 But Sally, her attention diverted, had not 
 heard. Presently she looked up. 
 
 "Well, Harris, what is it?" 
 
 The man muttered again. 
 
 "On arrive!" cried Sally, rising. "The 
 others are coming! They are here!" 
 
 From beyond floated a kiss of harps 
 that were marrying violins to the 
 strain of a waltz; Malakoff, rising 
 also, bent to Mme. de Solferino, and, 
 her hand on his arm, led the way 
 from the brilliant room, to rooms more 
 brilliant. 
 
 In a little, though, marshalled by him, 
 Welden, Cantire, Aquaviva and de Dol re 
 turned to the table, where cigars and 
 liqueurs were being served, and where other 
 men joined them. 
 
 "Monsieur Welden," Malakoff caUed 
 from where he stood. "You know the Mar- 
 
114 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 quis Aquaviva de Santamarta, the Comte de 
 Dol and M. Cantire." 
 
 Then as the men nodded, collectively he 
 added: 
 
 "Messieurs, this gentleman, a compatriot 
 of the duchess, is a renowned sportsman. 
 Should he consent to enter, in all conscience, 
 I may say, have a care." 
 
 "Thank you," said Welden, hiting the end 
 from a cigar. "But enter what?" 
 
 "A little run over the sticks at de Dol s," 
 Cantire, in English, replied. 
 
 "Permit me," said the count, approaching. 
 He had honest eyes, a slight moustache, and 
 a careful manner. "Monsieur," he con 
 tinued to Welden, "at Chantilly, I have some 
 stables, oh, nothing to speak of, but a little 
 stretch which is, perhaps, sufficient, and these 
 gentlemen, with Kara Saraguine, whom I 
 do not see at this moment, have been arrang 
 ing a hurdle-race for the sixth. If now you, 
 monsieur, will be amiable enough to enter, 
 
A LITTLE FRISK 115 
 
 it will become truly an international run. 
 Prince Kara is Russian, the Marquis 
 Aquaviva is " 
 
 "I should like nothing better," Welden 
 cut in. "But on the sixth, I have arranged 
 to be at M. de Malakoff s." 
 
 "And most amiable it is of you," Mala- 
 koff exclaimed. "I thank you infinitely, 
 but" 
 
 "I have also," Cantire, in English, inter 
 rupted. "We can send our horses to Chant- 
 illy before we go, and run up from Deau- 
 ville together." 
 
 "Voyons!" said Malakoff. "Shall we not 
 talk French? De Dol does not understand, 
 or Aquaviva either." 
 
 "Pardon, yes, a very little," the count soft 
 ly interposed. Then lapsing serenely into 
 French he added: "As a baby, I studied it 
 with my nurse." 
 
 "It is arranged then?" said Aquaviva to 
 Welden. He had a full beard, pursed lips, 
 
116 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 and an air of being very much pleased with 
 everything. "You will join us, is it not so?" 
 
 Welden, turning to him, with his laughing 
 eyes, nodded. "Yes, thanks, it ought to be 
 very good fun." 
 
 "Well, then, what would a little cut at 
 baccarat say to you, messieurs?" Malakoff 
 in his rich voice inquired. "Ah! behold 
 Cantire, who abandons us now." 
 
 For Cantire, rightly preferring the nobler 
 possibilities of captivating women, to the 
 more sordid chance of winning gold, was 
 then making for the frisk. 
 
 "A hundred louis," Malakoff resumed. 
 "It is I who am banker. If you please, this 
 way." 
 
 He motioned at a footman and a door was 
 opened to a f umoir where an oval table was 
 set, and where presently Welden, to whom 
 he dealt practically nothing but eights 
 and nines, relieved him of a major portion 
 of the money. 
 
A LITTLE FRISK 117 
 
 Malakoff laughed and got up. "Bah! 
 Another time it will be my turn." 
 
 But now Aquaviva took the bank. Other 
 men, drifting in, staked against him. Wei- 
 den continued to play and continued to win. 
 Meanwhile Malakoff had gone. De Dol, 
 too, had disappeared. Of the original party 
 only Aquaviva and Welden remained. Fi 
 nally Welden himself stood up, and, guided 
 by the harps, entered the room that served 
 for the frisk. 
 
 It was large and luminous. The polished 
 floor was swept by trains undulant and glis 
 tening. There were black coats from the 
 lapels of which hung clusters of minute dec 
 orations; white shirts which the broad rib 
 bons of higher orders enhanced. Bare shoul 
 ders and jewelled necks emerged from pearl 
 embroidered corsages. Coils of hair, bitten 
 by combs, gleamed with hereditary gems. 
 There was the sheen of silk, of diamonds and 
 of flesh. There was, too, an aroma of orris 
 
118 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 and flowers which, while a trifle voluptuous, 
 was also a little heavy. But over it, ahove 
 everything, there mounted that atmosphere 
 which is the marked characteristic of such 
 assemblies, the vaporisation of a sentiment 
 shared by all, that of being among oneselves, 
 and of being thereby generally and solidly 
 united by nothing whatever. 
 
 In the centre of the room, couples were 
 turning. Beyond, in a doorway that led to 
 other salons, Sally stood talking to Cantire. 
 Opposite, on the other side of the room, high 
 windows that descended to the floor, opened 
 on a balcony. 
 
 Welden moved on. He did not see Maud, 
 and in search of her, he went to the nearest 
 of these windows. In front of it, her back 
 to the balustrade, the girl stood talking to 
 Malakoff. She was looking down and did 
 not see him, and Malakoff, who was facing 
 her, did not either. 
 
 Tranquilly and courteously he approached. 
 
A LITTLE FRISK 119 
 
 "Without indiscretion, if I am not interrupt 
 ing" 
 
 Maud looked up, and Malakoff looked 
 
 around. 
 
 "I beg of you," said the latter. 
 
 "Would you care for a turn?" asked Wei- 
 den, who, as he spoke, nodded and smiled at 
 both of them. 
 
 "Voila!" Malakoff exclaimed. "You re 
 mind me. I also have my duties. Mad 
 emoiselle!" Moving aside, he bowed. 
 
 "Sans adieu," Maud called to him over 
 her shoulder, and accompanied by Welden 
 passed on and in. 
 
 There Welden put an arm about her and 
 together they began gliding and reversing 
 with that ease, which, in all the cosmopolitan 
 world of fashion, Americans best display. 
 As they floated over the floor, others, who 
 were also waltzing, stopped to observe them, 
 noticing which they stopped themselves. 
 
 "Let us go in there," said Welden, indi- 
 
120 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 eating the door at which, a moment before, 
 Sally had stood. 
 
 It led to a smaller room, delicately fitted, 
 where, however, they were not alone. Other 
 people, Parisians with whom they were un 
 acquainted, were seated or standing about. 
 But, near the entrance, was an unoccupied 
 sofa, on which Maud sank and Welden 
 dropped. 
 
 The girl unfurled a fan. "Dearest, do 
 you know, Malakoff talks really rather 
 well." 
 
 Welden nodded. "He isn t such a bad 
 sort. I won a pot of money of him to 
 night. By the way, I am in for a race. It 
 is to be on the sixth " 
 
 Further confidences were interrupted. In 
 the doorway Cantire appeared, looking 
 eagerly about. 
 
 "Oh, Miss Barhyte," he cried, as he spot 
 ted the girl. "Won t you give me this dance, 
 or at least, what s left of it?" 
 
A LITTLE FRISK 121 
 
 Maud, rising, took the boy s arm, and 
 Welden, who had also risen, dropped back. 
 
 The pot of money which he had won, 
 while inconsequential, was an assistance. 
 There had been a very inconveniencing 
 crash in Wall street. That morning 
 he had meditated wiring there and 
 having the proceeds of July coupons 
 and dividends cabled to his Paris ac 
 count. But now, meanwhile, the pot, 
 however relatively small, was a help. 
 Mechanically he felt of the pocket in which 
 he had placed it. 
 
 As he did so, Maud reappeared. Other 
 confidences ensued, which, as before, were 
 interrupted. A new aspirant for a turn came 
 to the girl. After the second, there was a 
 third, then there were more. For in the 
 minds of men, however obtuse, her beauty 
 put a restlessness, a trouble, sometimes a 
 hope. Those who were free coveted the 
 possibilities it evoked; those who were not 
 
122 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 ruminated the savourousness of those pos 
 sibilities. 
 
 "Dearest," she said at last. "Shall we 
 go?" 
 
 "Yes, a 1 Anglaise," Welden answered, 
 expressing in the language of the land its 
 neat equivalent for the English "French 
 leave." 
 
 "Dearest," she remonstrated, "I at least 
 must say a word." 
 
 In search of Sally, on through the ball 
 room she passed, surrounded by homages, 
 enveloped by the glances of men. 
 
 Presently, after the word had been said, 
 and her cloak had been put about her, she 
 went down through a double hedge of lackeys 
 to the perron below, where her lover waited 
 and a footman bawled: 
 
 "The people of Madame la princesse de 
 Solferino!" 
 
 Very gorgeous, very smiling, the princess, 
 formerly Fanny Murray of New York, in- 
 
A LITTLE FRISK 123 
 
 terrupted her luminous exit to remark to 
 them: "Hasn t it been jolly?" 
 
 When she, her glitter and her platitudes 
 had gone, the footman bawled again, this 
 time for Welden s carriage. 
 
 About the entrance was a group of 
 grooms, idlers, birds of the night. Down 
 the avenue glowed the lamps of waiting cars 
 and broughams. Before these a sergent-de- 
 ville, his head bent, his hands behind his 
 back, promenaded Napoleonically. Above, 
 the moon hung, a round of butter in the sky. 
 In the air was a sweetness, and from the 
 open windows sank the swooning measures 
 of a waltz. 
 
 Welden, after putting Maud into the 
 carriage, drew from a pocket of his white 
 waistcoat a chainless watch, from the stem 
 of which her token, the sapphire, dangled. 
 
 "You have had no supper. Suppose we 
 go somewhere and take a private room?" 
 
 With a quick intake of the breath, the 
 
124 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 girl answered: "Dearest, yes, and let us 
 hurry." 
 
 "The Cafe de la Paix," Welden threw at 
 the coachman s back. "Et vivement!" 
 
 Then, in a moment, when he was beside 
 her, the girl withdrew a glove, put her hand 
 in his and whispered : 
 
 "Dearest, I am so happy that it frightens 
 
 me." 
 
 "Yes," Welden replied. "I know. I, 
 too, am afraid." 
 
 "You!" 
 
 "In any love affair there are always three. 
 The third is the unknown. It is that which 
 frightens." 
 
 What he meant he could not have told. 
 The remark, passably oracular, had but 
 sprung into the sudden utterance, which, oc 
 casionally, prophecies take. Dismissed at 
 the time in immediate embraces, afterward 
 it was shudderingly recalled. 
 
V 
 
 THE VILLA PORTUGAISE 
 
 To the cosmopolite, Deauville is delight 
 ful. The days fall by in an atmosphere drip 
 ping with ammonia and desire, scented with 
 caprices and brine, shuttled too by that gen 
 eral deviltry, which those consorts of society, 
 wealth and idleness, inevitably produce. 
 
 The house there which the Malakoffs had 
 taken was known as the Villa Portugaise. 
 The reason of that was inscrutable. Instead 
 of the patio, loggia, fountains and blooms 
 which the name implied, there was a trim 
 lawn fronting a thoroughly English dwell 
 ing that looked obliquely at the sea. 
 
 In spite of the Britannic reserve of its ap 
 pearance, there was in it an ease, an entire 
 liberty, a complete sans-gene that harmo 
 nised very perfectly with the Deauvillian 
 air. 
 
 On the ground floor were the living rooms, 
 
126 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 spacious, cool, perhaps a trifle severe. These 
 gave on the ocean. On the lawn side was a 
 wide hall that extended from one end of the 
 house to the other. In the centre was the en 
 trance. At the right of the doorway was a 
 table on which were reviews, papers, periodi 
 cals. Above it was a rack in which letters 
 were put. To the left of the entrance, at the 
 extreme end, a flight of steps started, con 
 tinued for a few steps, then halting, turned 
 abruptly and directly up to a galleried floor 
 above where the bedrooms were, which for 
 general convenience had been numbered. 
 
 When, on the evening of the third of July, 
 Maud and Welden arrived, they were met in 
 the haU by Sally, by Malakoff, the Cerisys, 
 the Solferinos and a dozen others, among 
 whom was Cantire. 
 
 The boy, attired in beautifully cut evening 
 clothes, looked hot, or rather red. Mme. de 
 Cerisy, taking advantage of his youth, had 
 put to him questions which even at Deau- 
 
THE VILLA PORTUGAISE 127 
 
 ville were perhaps indiscreet. Mrs. Cawtree, 
 who had come over from her own very neigh 
 bourly villa, had overheard and was laugh 
 ing. 
 
 "Hasten, my children," Sally, after the 
 first greetings, called in French. "We dine 
 and at once." 
 
 Maud was then taken to No. 10, a room at 
 the head of the stairs. Opposite was No. 12. 
 It was there Welden was shown. The ar 
 rangement was so convenient that he con 
 gratulated himself on its idyllic simplicity. 
 
 A little later when he and Maud had 
 dressed and both were about to descend the 
 stair, they could hear Sally exclaiming. 
 
 In her hand was a blue rag of a telegram 
 on which a string of typewritten words had 
 been gummed. 
 
 "What is it?" Malakoff asked. 
 
 "Giselle Oppensheim who wires that she 
 comes to-morrow. But where shall I put 
 her? Where?" 
 
128 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Bah!" answered Malakoff. "It will ar 
 range itself. On s avisera." 
 
 Mrs. Cawtree, who knew everything, 
 everything fashionably knowahle that is, 
 looked admiringly at Sally. It was not 
 every bride and particularly it was not 
 every American bride, who was capable of 
 being so indulgently sans-fa9on. Mrs. Caw- 
 tree s esteem for Sally mounted. But at 
 once an attenuation followed. Probably 
 she does not know, the lady reflected. 
 
 "Do you fancy that the duchess knows 
 about Mme. Oppensheim?" she asked of 
 Cantire when presently she found him next 
 to her at dinner. 
 
 "Knows what?" the boy inquired, chok 
 ing down as he spoke, the velvet of a 
 bisque. 
 
 "I remind myself," Mrs. Cawtree inconse 
 quentially resumed, "of the woman who 
 asked Dumas whether there was anything 
 between him and the Princess Belgioso. 
 
THE VILLA PORTUGAISE 129 
 
 Madam, he replied, "sometimes nothing 
 whatever. 
 
 It was a moment before Cantire got it. 
 When he did he laughed in a fashion so dis 
 orderly that to steady him, Mrs. Cawtree 
 asked him to a frisk at her house the next 
 night. 
 
 The effort succeeding, she turned with a 
 similar invitation to Aquaviva who was op 
 posite, after which she asked Prince Sara- 
 guine who sat between her and Sally. 
 
 Kara Saraguine had an air of having 
 lived extensively and of fully intending to 
 continue such living. At the moment he was 
 eating mussels from the sauce of a sole Nor- 
 mande and while listening to Sally s chat 
 ter, had an eye on Maud, who sat a little be 
 yond, on the other side of the table. 
 
 "That youthfulness is ravishing," he re 
 marked and wiped his mouth. "A compa 
 triot, Duchess? One could devour her." 
 
 Cantire s eyes were now on the girl, so 
 
130 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 were Malakoff s and Solferino s, and Maud, 
 knowing of old the ideality of men s 
 thoughts, blushed suddenly and divinely. 
 
 But at once, for countenance sake, lean 
 ing forward, she called, in English, to Sally. 
 
 "What sort of a place is Etretat? While 
 I was dressing they brought me a telegram 
 from my father. He is to motor there from 
 Frascati s to-morrow. Is it nice?" 
 
 "Charming!" Saraguine volunteered in 
 French. "The downs, the cliffs, the view, 
 whatever you will, is charming, except the 
 world there. No, frankly, Mademoiselle, 
 that is everything there is of most grocer." 
 
 "Etretat!" Solferino, also in French, ex 
 claimed. "I promenaded myself once that 
 way. Once, that is permissible, twice would 
 be a sin. And I, I am not exacting. I " 
 
 Solferino ran on. Presently everybody 
 seemed to be talking at once. Momentarily 
 Maud s too alluring looks were forgotten. 
 But when the dinner was over, several men 
 
THE VILLA PORTUGAISE 131 
 
 gathered in the hall about her and there re 
 mained until drawn into the fumoir, where 
 Welden was the last to follow and where, 
 afterward, with the hopelessness of a regret 
 that is to be eternal, he wished he had never 
 gone. 
 
 There, a footman was trundling a chest 
 on wheels. In it were cigars of different 
 shades and sizes, cigarettes of various brands. 
 As Welden entered, the man steered it up to 
 him. He took a londres and surveyed the 
 room. 
 
 Near by was a buffet, hospitably inviting. 
 On it were decanters of chartreuse and 
 maraschino ; flagons of brandy and gin ; bot 
 tles of Vichy and Eau de Vals. These latter 
 had obviously been attacked. But with that 
 abstemiousness which is a characteristic of 
 the way we live now, the liquors and liqueurs 
 were untouched. 
 
 Contiguously was a billiard table on which 
 Cantire, a cigar between his teeth, was knock- 
 
132 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 ing balls about. Opposite on a sofa, raised 
 by a dais, Solferino sprawled. He looked 
 precisely like a fat old woman. 
 
 Idly Welden wondered why his wife had 
 accepted him. She was a Murray. The 
 Murrays were not brilliant. But in point 
 of birth and, for that matter, of breeding, 
 her family, like Maud s and like his own, 
 were superior, in every way, to any imperial 
 spawn. 
 
 He passed on. Beyond was the green 
 baize of a baccarat table, about which now 
 other men were grouped. Saraguine was 
 dealing. The cards which he gave to the 
 right, Aquaviva received; those to the left 
 went to Malakoff. Behind these the others 
 stood and punted. 
 
 Presently, Malakoff, to whom Saraguine 
 had furnished an almost uninterrupted 
 series of picture cards, got up, and Welden, 
 after a circular look of inquiry, took the va* 
 cated chair. 
 
THE VILLA PORTUGAISE 133 
 
 The ill luck that had visited that side 
 of the table continued. Across the way 
 Aquaviva and his backers were winning. 
 Meanwhile Welden and those behind him 
 lost. Then, as is usual in such circum 
 stances, the losers abandoning their po 
 sitions, deserted to the favoured side 
 and shortly, from the chair which Mala- 
 koff had relinquished, Welden was betting 
 alone. 
 
 He had begun with hundred franc wagers. 
 As these vanished, his stake increased. 
 From a silk card case he drew blue and white 
 notes, one after another, until all which it 
 held were gone. Barring some loose gold in 
 his waistcoat he had nothing. 
 
 "Je suis ratiboise," he remarked. "I am 
 cleaned out." 
 
 He was getting up, as Malakoff had done, 
 when Saraguine, seeing his predicament and 
 perhaps conscious that if he desisted, the 
 game might cease, said to him: 
 
DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "If you will, I beg of you, stake on pa 
 role." 
 
 "Thanks," Welden answered and resumed 
 his seat. "A hundred louis." 
 
 The game proceeded. Cantire had left 
 the billiard table. Solferino approached. 
 Aquaviva, relinquishing his chair to de 
 Cerisy, went to the buffet, drank largely of 
 Vichy and walked away. 
 
 "Nine!" said Welden, exposing his cards, 
 
 "Eight!" said Saraguine, exposing his own. 
 
 "Nothing," said de Cerisy, pushing his 
 cards aside. 
 
 Saraguine, after gathering in the money 
 from that quarter, paid Welden and redealt. 
 
 For a while thereafter, fortune changed. 
 The players that had deserted Welden re 
 turned. He recovered what he had lost and 
 ten thousand francs in addition. Then luck 
 veered. He staked the ten thousand, lost 
 them and, a quarter of an hour later, had 
 lost fifty thousand more. 
 
THE VILLA PORTUGAISE 135 
 
 Tranquilly, but this time definitely, he 
 got from his seat, drank of the Vichy and 
 went out in search of Maud. 
 
 In the hall women were grouped, talking 
 modes and morals, the cosmopolitan gossip 
 of London, Paris and Rome. Maud, a little 
 removed from the others, was in a rocking 
 chair, a slipper just visible beneath the hem 
 of her skirt, her bare arms upraised behind 
 her head. 
 
 Before her, Malakoff balanced himself on 
 the arm of another chair. As Welden ap 
 proached, he stood up. 
 
 "You won, I hope," he threw out, and 
 sauntered away. 
 
 "As it happened I lost," Welden ex 
 claimed, not to him, but to the girl. "I shall 
 have to go to Paris to-morrow." 
 
 "Dearest, I have money, eight or nine 
 hundred francs I think," Maud slowly, in 
 her low, caressing voice, replied. 
 
 Welden laughed. "I could not take it and 
 
136 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 even if I could, it would not be anywhere 
 near enough. As it is I shall have to cable." 
 
 "Dearest, to-morrow is the Fourth, it is 
 particularly for to-morrow we are here and 
 in the evening Mrs. Cawtree wants us to 
 come to her. Could you not put it off?" 
 
 "Not very comfortably. The money has 
 to be paid at once, within the legal delays 
 that is, and they amount to twenty-four 
 hours. But I will be back in time for Mrs. 
 Cawtree s. At the latest I can take a train 
 which gets here at nine and to-night " 
 
 "Dearest, be careful," the girl interrupt 
 ed. Slowly she looked around. But they 
 were quite alone. "Be sure first, won t you," 
 she added, "that no one is about." 
 
 Welden ran his long thin fingers through 
 his bright thick hair. Not for this world 
 certainly and probably not either for the 
 next, would he by so much as a gesture have 
 compromised the girl. 
 
 Much later, after he had waited longly 
 
THE VILLA PORTUGAISE 137 
 
 and listened vainly and made two abortive 
 attempts, when at last the villa seemed 
 entirely hushed, he crossed the little space 
 that lay between his room and hers. 
 
 The door was unlocked. As he opened it 
 the disposition of the room was such that he 
 could see of the girl only the rich orange of 
 her hair, the outline of her pillowed head. 
 
 At the noise, ever so slight, which he 
 made on entering, she turned. Immediately 
 he heard, or thought he heard, a footfall in 
 the corridor without. Quickly he closed the 
 door and bolted it. It was, he noticed, mas 
 sively made, of solid oak. 
 
 In the momentary uneasiness which, in 
 circumstances such as these, even a problem 
 atic footfall may and does properly excite, 
 he reflected that no one could get in and 
 then immediately he told himself that no 
 one would try. 
 
VI 
 THE HEAD 
 
 The next evening Welden left Paris for 
 Deauville. Ordinarily, as he had told Maud, 
 he would have arrived at nine. But the de 
 railment of another train interfered. It was 
 eleven when he reached the villa. 
 
 A gale was blowing. From within, 
 through the windows and the open door, 
 lights fell on the driveway, chequering the 
 pebbles with yellow spots. From beyond, 
 in a lull of the wind, came the sound of vio 
 lins and voices. The villa itself was silent. 
 
 As Welden entered, a footman came run 
 ning. No one else was about. Turning, he 
 passed on to the stairs and up them. 
 
 During the delay that had supervened he 
 told himself that because of it, Maud, ceas- 
 
THE HEAD 139 
 
 ing to expect him, would have gone on to 
 Mrs. Cawtree s, and it was with the idea of 
 dressing and of joining her that he made 
 for his room. But, while on the stair, it oc 
 curred to him to look in hers. 
 
 On reaching it, he turned the knob. The 
 door was unlocked, it opened at his touch, 
 and, precisely as on the night before, he saw 
 the rich orange of her pillowed head, but saw 
 too, beside her, Malakoff. 
 
 For a second only. Enveloped momen 
 tarily, yet, for the moment, enveloped abso 
 lutely by the catastrophic emotions of a 
 whirlwind of nightmares, before he could 
 move, the door, slammed in his face, was 
 bolted. 
 
 In the instant concussion, the anchylosis 
 of the anterior shock fell by, replaced imme 
 diately by blood madness. 
 
 Behind that door a man and a woman 
 were occupied in continuing to be. Of that 
 alone he was conscious. Over all the cells of 
 
140 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 his brain a somnolence had fallen, over all, 
 save one, and that one cell, vehemently act 
 ive, was inciting him to tear with bare hands 
 life from the man, that done, to tear it again 
 from the woman. 
 
 But for the door he could and would have. 
 
 Violently he flung himself against it. Vio 
 lently yet vainly, and before perhaps it were 
 possible for him to have realised the futility 
 of the effort, he did realise that some one 
 was near him, somebody who had a hand on 
 his arm and who was offensively interfering. 
 
 Savagely he turned. Before him, in ball 
 dress, a fichu of lace about her head, was 
 Sally. 
 
 "Don t," she was saying. "Don t." 
 
 Welden, maniacal still, could have struck 
 her. She saw it. But she did not flinch. 
 Though naturally agitated, she did not seem 
 frightened, surprised merely and also un 
 certain. 
 
 Welden raised his hand with a movement 
 
THE HEAD 141 
 
 that threatened her, threatened the occu 
 pants of that room, menaced the house, 
 Deauville itself, a gesture wide, insane, ele 
 mental and human. 
 
 "Don t," she repeated. 
 
 In the constant reiteration of that one 
 word there must have been something of the 
 effect of a spray. The irritability of the 
 one active cell subsided, that of other cells 
 was aroused. 
 
 Welden s arm fell at his side. He stared 
 at Sally. Then, for the first time, one of his 
 two selves recognised her. 
 
 Sally, discovering not that, but the al 
 tered attitude, faced him. 
 
 "He would not be there unless she 
 wished." 
 
 The words fell over him plentifully like 
 water thrown from a bucket. In the full 
 douche and splatter of them, their meaning 
 insinuated itself into the arteries of thought. 
 The man s two selves, the objective and the 
 
142 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 subconscious, rejoined each other; mania 
 subsided, somnambulism ceased. Abruptly 
 his entire brain awoke. The potential trog 
 lodyte that was in him, as potentially he is 
 in us all, dematerialised. At once a man of 
 the world in flannels and a straw hat found 
 himself in the presence of a lady. That hat 
 he removed. 
 
 In the eyes and about the mouth of the 
 lady was an expression which some ladies 
 have when they are occupied less with what 
 they say than with other things which they 
 do not propose to mention. 
 
 It was quite the same to Welden. That 
 which occupied him was the ineluctable truth 
 of her statement. Malakoff would not be 
 there if Maud had not consented. 
 
 It was in a shrill whisper that Sally had 
 produced it. Now, in the same tone, look 
 ing him still in the face, she said: 
 
 "Come below with me." 
 
 As she spoke she stooped, gathered the 
 
THE HEAD 143 
 
 train of her dress and together they descend 
 ed the stair. 
 
 In the hall a footman stood. Sally left 
 Welden and went to the table. Above it in 
 a rack was a letter which she avidly took 
 and put in her corsage. Then, turning, she 
 spoke to the servant. 
 
 Welden, meanwhile, was still absorbed by 
 her statement. But happiness was yet so 
 recent that the ineluctable truth had not 
 fully permeated all the cerebral convolu 
 tions, and the fact that it had not, manifested 
 itself in the melodramatic phrase which all 
 have uttered, all at least whom the unfore 
 seen has felled. 
 
 "It is impossible; I am dreaming!" 
 
 At that, instantly, there surged before 
 him the vision of the pillowed head, but now, 
 through some miracle of hell, he could see 
 the body, the fair ivory of it blotched with 
 postules. 
 
 Again hgematomania would have claimed 
 
DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 him. For a moment it was not only the vi 
 sion that he saw but zigzags of black and 
 scarlet. Determinedly he reacted. Almost 
 immediately the natural poise of the man re 
 turned, with it as quickly came the realisa 
 tion that since already he had done nothing, 
 there was nothing that he or any other civil 
 ised being could do, except indeed to leave 
 the house. 
 
 At the sure cognition of that he looked 
 about for Sally. She was speaking to a 
 maid. 
 
 "I am going," he told her. 
 
 Sally, from over her shoulder, nodded at 
 him. 
 
 "So am I," she answered and went on with 
 her orders. 
 
 "Perkins," she was saying, "M. de Mala- 
 koff is in number ten. Tell Harris to have 
 two of the men remain near by until they 
 see him leave it." 
 
 Welden wondered absently at her reply. 
 
THE HEAD 145 
 
 It was odd, he thought, that she also should 
 be going. Then, as absently, he remembered 
 that she was Malakoff s wife and he contem 
 plated the fact gravely, without pity, It 
 seemed to him just that besides himself some 
 one else should suffer. 
 
 "And Perkins," Sally called at the now 
 retreating woman. "Bring my jewel case 
 and some things, enough for to-night." 
 
 "Come," she added to Welden, moving 
 as she spoke to the door. "I am going to 
 Mrs. Cawtree s. You had better go to the 
 hotel, to the Roches Crises." 
 
 The weather, like themselves, had become 
 dramatic. The high wind that swept the 
 frivolity of the land, came from the sea, per 
 haps from the Pole. It was strong and rude 
 and, as they issued from the house, it 
 pounced on them, howling and gay as a pack 
 of foxhounds. 
 
 Sally s clothes were lifted and tossed, the 
 fichu was nearly torn from her head. She 
 
146 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 dominated her dress however, maintained 
 the bit of lace, and, as they went down the 
 path, she called at Welden: "What shall 
 you do to-morrow?" 
 
 The "to-morrow" was all he caught. The 
 rest of the question the gale scattered before 
 it reached him. But it was enough. It 
 prompted. As yet he had not thought. 
 Then at once he knew, and he determined to 
 wire to Le Hillel and dispatch him, with 
 some local acquaintance, to Malakoff. 
 
 Sally, fancying that he had not heard at 
 all, cried at him again, repeating the ques 
 tion. 
 
 Welden, holding his hat on with one hand 
 and pointing back at the house with the 
 other, shouted: "I shall have friends of 
 mine call there." 
 
 That was very satisfactory. Sally, her 
 head bent, considered it gleefully. It was 
 what she had hoped, an additional arrow 
 for her quiver, in which already was divorce. 
 
THE HEAD 14T 
 
 Presently she spoke again, but what she said 
 Welden did not hear, did not care. 
 
 The sea, pounding on the shore, was 
 creating a thunder deafening and con 
 fused. It was as though a gigantic 
 machine were hastening terribly to some 
 enormous task. 
 
 Sally, in despair of making Welden hear 
 otherwise, caught at his arm and motioned 
 him to lower his head. 
 
 When he had she shrieked in his ear: "I 
 want you to do me a great favour, a very 
 great favour, will you?" 
 
 "Will I what?" 
 
 He had heard but half of what she said, 
 not because of the roar but because of his 
 thoughts which she, with her questions, en 
 tangled. 
 
 Now, however, again she was shrieking: 
 "I want you to kill him." 
 
 But though she shrieked, she smiled and, 
 in spite of the tossing gale, in spite too of her 
 
148 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 ballooning dress, she looked sweet and sim 
 ple. 
 
 Welden nodded. For the first time since 
 they had known each other, what she wanted 
 he wanted also. 
 
 Sally nodded too. Clutching at her dress 
 she shouted: "Don t let anyone know why; 
 promise that you will not." 
 
 They had reached the gate of a little park 
 in which the Cawtree villa stood. In the 
 shelter of the wall there was a respite from 
 the gale. The sea too sounded less thun 
 derous. 
 
 "Promise you won t," she repeated more 
 normally. 
 
 Welden cried at her: "That reminds me, 
 will you do something for me?" 
 
 "Anything," Sally cried back. "I will do 
 anything in the world for you." 
 
 The fervour of the protestation Welden 
 let pass unnoticed. 
 
 "Is Prince Saraguine in there?" 
 
THE HEAD 149 
 
 "He is leading the cotillon." 
 
 Welden got at his card case and from it 
 took a cheque already made out. 
 
 "Give him this with my thanks." He 
 turned. "Good night," he added. 
 
 "Good night," she replied and, as he 
 moved into the gale, she made a trumpet of 
 her hands and screamed through them: 
 "Good luck." 
 
 Welden, holding his hat to his head, 
 passed on to the village. The wind that blew 
 through his flannels, bent the trees, swept the 
 narrow streets, dispersed their germs, re 
 freshing whatever it touched, leaving the 
 quivering air pure and delicious. 
 
 The hall of the Roches Grises, saturated 
 with tobacco and electricity, full of people, 
 of hurrying waiters, of parties returning 
 from the Casino at Trouville and of tour 
 ists eyeing one another hostilely or with in 
 difference, resounded with calls of the 
 telephone, with slamming doors and the 
 
150 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 noise of lifts that ceaselessly rose and de 
 scended. 
 
 At the bureau, Welden secured a room, 
 sent a chasseur for his things to the villa and, 
 these recovered, at last was alone. 
 
 The room, though quiet, was as peo 
 pled as the hall. There were visions 
 in it, very many, that gradually, with 
 out effort, fused into a picture of a girl s 
 pillowed head. 
 
 The girl herself was a stranger. It was 
 not she he had loved, it was another, totally 
 different, one whom his imagination had cre 
 ated, a girl who had never lived and who 
 now was dead. The past alone was real. It 
 surged phantasmagorically, like a great de 
 ceit, a lie enormous and cruel, inexplicable 
 from sheer monstrosity. The crime he 
 had witnessed permeated that past, smear 
 ing it with the odiousness of a coarse 
 vulgarity. 
 
 In the chair in which he sat, he moved. 
 
THE HEAD 151 
 
 From the wall at which he stared, he turned. 
 Wherever he looked the picture appeared. 
 To escape it he hid his face in his hands. He 
 saw it there the clearer. At that, an agony 
 made of a thousand wounds, each distinct, 
 each more lancinant than the other, caught 
 and enveloped him. The torture of it thrust 
 into being memories long ablated. Frag 
 ments of recollections multiplied in his mind. 
 There came to him the day he had first seen 
 her, the hour he had first loved her, the mo 
 ment he had first thought she might care 
 for him, and, traversing these memories were 
 tempests of others; shaded interiors, chairs 
 under the trees, the ball-rooms of Newport, 
 Long Island lawns; sudden tableaux of 
 wherever a new delight had been experi 
 enced, of wherever a fresh sensation had 
 been born, of wherever she had exhaled her 
 invincible charm. 
 
 Within him the sea of these things 
 mounted, adding their bitterness to the sear 
 
152 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 of his wounds. There was no myrrh for 
 them. There is none for a death rattle, 
 and as the obsessing vision returned, it 
 brought with it a lassitude so large, so 
 empty and desolate, that it resembled ex 
 tinction itself. 
 
VII 
 THE DOOR 
 
 On the morrow the gale had gone, flown 
 afar, to die perhaps on some shore of the 
 Mediterranean. In Welden too a tempest 
 had subsided. In the eager sunshine that 
 filled the room he stood, contemplating a 
 note, a hurried scrawl from Sally informing 
 him she had learned from Perkins that Mala- 
 koff was leaving for Paris. 
 
 The letter fell from him. A telegram dif 
 ferent from the one he had meditated must, 
 he saw, be sent, and he wrote one asking Le 
 Hillel to meet him at the Escrime. But 
 there were other things to be done and done 
 quickly. He gave orders; tubbed, dressed, 
 drank some coffee, for even in the great 
 crises of life one must do these things, and 
 in the same spirit perhaps that, at the rev- 
 
154 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 eille for battle, men shave and see to it that 
 their gloves are spotless, Welden adjusted 
 his neckcloth and considered the sheen of 
 his shoes. 
 
 But Malakoff s move perplexed. He 
 could not understand why the man should 
 be leaving. Toward the man himself he 
 was now indifferent. It was not the man 
 he hated, it was the male. The man had 
 outraged every canon of decency. He had 
 broken hospitality s first and highest law. 
 Yet, he could have done none of these things 
 if Maud had not consented and, the consent 
 granted, any other male would have done 
 the same. Toward the consenter he felt no 
 hatred either, a distaste merely, very im 
 medicable, one that poisoned her and him 
 and life. 
 
 A rap had come. It was time to be going 
 and shortly, the bill paid, the service fee d, 
 he was off to the station. 
 
 There, already, an employee was calling 
 
THE DOOR 155 
 
 loudly for the voyageurs, and Welden, after 
 purchasing his fare and getting his luggage 
 ticketed, went from the bare white room to 
 the platform and mounted into the grey up 
 holstery of an empty compartment of the 
 train. 
 
 He was but seated when he saw Malakoff 
 swinging in. Rising abruptly, brusquely he 
 forced himself by and out. 
 
 Malakoff turned angrily. 
 
 "Monsieur," he called, "you have a man 
 ner of disregarding the bagatelles of the 
 door which I do not applaud. If you care 
 to apologise : 
 
 "I never apologise," Welden threw at 
 him. 
 
 Malakoff, pulling a glove from one hand, 
 raised it with the other. 
 
 Instantly that hand was pinioned. In 
 another instant it was flung aside and Wel 
 den, whose jaw had become ominously 
 square, confronted him. 
 
156 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "That is sufficient. Where can my 
 friends find yours?" 
 
 "At my house if it suits them." 
 
 "En voiture, messieurs, en voiture!" a 
 guard yelped, for now there were more lag 
 gards; Aquaviva, Saraguine and a man 
 whom Welden did not know. 
 
 These, ignorant as yet of the little scene, 
 had just issued from the station. 
 
 "Monsieur Welden," said the Russian, 
 "my thanks for the envoi of last night." 
 
 "Monsieur Welden," said the Italian, "do 
 not forget Chantilly to-morrow." 
 
 To an accompaniment of the employees 
 yelps both were speaking at once. 
 
 "You go with us, do you not?" asked the 
 prince, climbing as he spoke into the section 
 into which already Malakoff had mounted 
 and where Aquaviva followed. 
 
 "This way, this way," a guard barked. 
 
 Welden had but time to- clamber into an 
 adjoining compartment. At once the bolt 
 
THE DOOR 157 
 
 was shot, a whistle tooted, the train was 
 off. 
 
 In a corner sat a woman, very well 
 dressed, tall, fair, presumably English, who 
 looked invitingly at him. Except to remore 
 his hat, Welden ignored her completely. 
 
 The clarity of the morning sky, the pop 
 lars that bowed and fainted, the lovely Nor 
 man land, these things he ignored as well. 
 Over the white leagues his thoughts had run 
 on ahead. He was standing somewhere, ia 
 tennis shoes, his neck bare, his sleeves rolled 
 up, a yard of steel in his hand, and Malakoff 
 was before him. Mechanically his wrist 
 moved. The point of the steel advanced 
 and retreated in a line absolutely straight, 
 effecting in the parries only the minimum 
 circle. There were men that stood about 
 and watched and suddenly they saw Malak- 
 off fall, spitted, that yard of steel gone 
 through him. 
 
 What was the fair English woman, the 
 
158 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 clarity of the sky, the bowing poplars, the 
 lovely Norman land beside these pleasantly 
 murderous sensations? They entertained 
 him fully until the rush of the train de 
 creased into a soapy slide and the porters of 
 Saint-Lazare were calling at him. 
 
 Leaving his things in the rue de la Paix, 
 Welden drove on to the Escrime, the fen 
 cers club of which he was a member. 
 
 There, in the main hall, on a black divan, 
 a cigar between his teeth, Le Hillel was 
 seated. 
 
 Adjacently other- members were seated 
 and two men, their hands behind their backs, 
 paced slowly up and down. From a lateral 
 entrance, a colossal lackey in the club liv 
 ery, with knee breeches and silk stockings, 
 called loudly the sempiternal announcement 
 of French clubs, the amount of money in the 
 baccarat bank. 
 
 Le Hillel, withdrawing his cigar, waved it. 
 
 "I got your wire. Nothing serious, eh?" 
 
THE DOOR 159 
 
 "Do you know Malakoff ?" Welden asked, 
 seating himself on the divan. 
 
 "Enough- to say Good-day. Anything 
 wrong between you?" 
 
 Welden nodded. "We had some words 
 this morning." 
 
 Le Hillel stretched himself luxuriously. 
 "About a woman?" 
 
 "No. On the contrary." 
 
 Le Hillel assumed an attitude of still 
 greater luxuriousness. "You mean that the 
 lady is not to be mentioned. That s of 
 course. Whom have you got ?" 
 
 "You for one, I suppose?" 
 
 "My dear fellow, with the greatest pleas 
 
 ure." 
 
 "And I will ask Cantire." 
 
 "Cantire, no. He is under-secretary. A 
 little matter of this kind always makes talk 
 and that is displeasing in an embassy. Do 
 you know Louradour?" 
 
 Welden shook his head. 
 
160 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Le Hillel stood up, balanced himself on 
 his heels, then, with that tread which athletes 
 share with panthers, he joined the two men 
 who were pacing up and down and spoke to 
 one of them. 
 
 With a motion of apology to the other, 
 the former turned with Le Hillel to where 
 Welden was seated. 
 
 As they approached, Welden arose. 
 
 "Baron Louradour," said Le Hillel, 
 "this is my friend and brother-in-arms M. 
 Welden of New York. M. Welden has had 
 an argument over By the way," he in 
 terrupted himself to ask. "What did you 
 say it was about?" 
 
 Welden, raising his hat in response to the 
 baron s salutation, answered. "A door." 
 
 "A door!" Le Hillel repeated. "That is a 
 very dangerous topic." 
 
 "Monsieur," said the baron, employing 
 as he spoke an inflection which musically 
 rose and fell, "we have here in France an 
 
THE DOOR 161 
 
 adage with which doubtless you are familiar. 
 It is that a door should be open or closed. 
 Perhaps this one was neither " 
 
 With that, in a gesture of complete ap 
 preciation, the baron extended both hands. 
 Though presumably fifty, he had the pink 
 skin of a child, a smile of infinite indulgence, 
 and a large, loose tie. 
 
 "But permit me," he resumed. "Witk 
 whom did this argument occur?" 
 
 "With Malakoff." 
 
 "And permit me, is he to send his sec 
 onds?" 
 
 "No, I am to send mine." 
 
 "That is to say," interrupted Le Hillel, 
 "You and me, Baron, if you will do my 
 friend that honour." 
 
 "But how, then! It is your friend 
 who honours me. Permit me once more. 
 Your adversary has the choice of arms; 
 and you, monsieur, have you any pref 
 erence?" 
 
162 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Thanks," Welden answered, "anything 
 but swords." 
 
 Louradour smiled, displaying as he did 
 so teeth small, even, white as white paper. 
 It was obvious to him that that door had 
 opened or closed on something extremely 
 definite. 
 
 "I see," he replied. "No child s play." 
 Turning to Le Hillel he added: "M. 
 de Malakoff resides I suppose in his ave 
 nue? Good. It would be discourteous to 
 keep his friends waiting." Turning back to 
 Welden he continued: "You will remain 
 here? Good. In an hour at the latest. 
 Meanwhile allow me to express all my pleas 
 ure at meeting an American who views mat 
 ters as we do." 
 
 Laughing and nodding, the two men 
 passed on. 
 
 Presently Welden got the club chasseur 
 and sent nim with a five franc piece to buy 
 a little cardboard box which cost two sous. 
 
THE DOOR 163 
 
 "Keep the change," he said when the serv 
 ant reappeared. 
 
 Welden was lunching then. The meal 
 concluded, he took out his watch from 
 which hung the sapphire with its old French 
 device: Aultre n auray None but you. 
 
 The moderate irony of it mocked him. 
 He detached it, put it in the box and going 
 to the reading-room, wrapped, sealed and 
 directed it to Miss Barhyte, in the care of 
 her bankers, rue Scribe. Then, again req 
 uisitioning the chasseur, he sent him with 
 another white piece to deliver it. 
 
 "Finis!" he muttered with set teeth and 
 for a while contemplated the epitaph. 
 
 "Pardon. There are gentlemen who de 
 mand monsieur." 
 
 Welden looked up. He had been far 
 away, on the longest journey that a mortal 
 can take, into the depths of the irreparable. 
 It was the colossal lackey that had ad 
 dressed him. Rising, he followed the man 
 
164 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 into the hall where Le Hillel and Louradour 
 waited. 
 
 "To-morrow at eight," the former an 
 nounced. "Baron Louradour has obligingly 
 arranged to have the meeting take place at 
 the residence of M. de Ponthieu, his father- 
 in-law." 
 
 "You are really too good," said Welden, 
 
 The baron bowed. "It is nothing, noth 
 ing at all. M. de Ponthieu is with my fam 
 ily at the waters. And let us see. Yes. It 
 is foils." 
 
 He smiled, patted his tie and added: 
 "You will excuse me, my dear sir, will you 
 not? Till to-morrow." 
 
 "Deuced nice of him too," said Le Hillel 
 when he had gone. "We might have had to 
 go to Neuilly. His father-in-law s place is 
 five minutes from your hotel. I will stop 
 by for you in the morning. And now, what 
 is the programme?" 
 
 Welden lit a cigarette. "Later, if you 
 
THE DOOR 165 
 
 like, I will have a bout with you. Then we 
 might dine somewhere and I will go to bed 
 early." 
 
 Approvingly Le Hillel nodded. Welden 
 was a man after his own heart, a man sure 
 of himself, one who had no intention of 
 writing letters, of making a will or even a 
 night of it, a virtuoso who knew that the 
 wrist of a swordsman is as sensitive as that 
 of a violinist. 
 
VIII 
 THE DUEL 
 
 The morning broke darkly. When Wei- 
 den reached the street the sky was heaped 
 with clouds sulphurous and evil. To the 
 thin thunder of metal shutters a lout, across 
 the way, was opening a shop. Beyond, two 
 Percherons, harnessed to a high white cart, 
 snorted their ennui. At the curb, in a motor, 
 was Le Hillel. With him was a little man 
 in a tall hat, who held a bag on his knees. 
 
 "Hello!" Le Hillel threw out. "Hop in. 
 Be careful." As he spoke he indicated a 
 long green bundle that lay at his feet. 
 "Avenue Gabriel," he called at the chauf 
 feur. 
 
 "Do you remember Sarcey?" he present 
 ly resumed as the motor flew up the street. 
 "On a morning a bit worse than this he had 
 
THE DUEL 167 
 
 an affair which he insisted on conducting 
 under an umbrella. I may be winged, the 
 old idiot declared, but I refuse to catch 
 cold. How did you sleep? This is Dr. 
 jMeyer." 
 
 The machine now had turned into the rue 
 de Rivoli. Scudding on, it crossed the foun- 
 tained Place and shortly stopped in the 
 briefest and most seigneurial of Parisian 
 avenues. 
 
 Before them, a great double doorway 
 opened slowly, with respect. Above it was 
 a stone arch in which a blazon had been cut. 
 On either side was a vast, white wall. With 
 in was a vista of trees, large urns, marble 
 benches. Beyond was a tennis court, farther 
 away a house. In the damp, fresh air, a 
 scent of roses and acacias clung. Over all 
 was a brooding quiet, the splendid disdain 
 of nature for the imbecile activity of man. 
 
 Simultaneously with the motor, a crimson 
 touring car flew up. From it descended 
 
168 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Malakoff, Aquaviva, Saraguine and a man 
 also in a high hat, also with a bag who, as 
 the others saluted, exchanged with Dr. Mey 
 er a professional smile. 
 
 Without speaking all passed in and slow 
 ly, respectfully, the great doors closed. On 
 each side a servant in brown was stationed. 
 A step beyond stood Louradour. 
 
 He raised his hat. "Gentlemen, I salute 
 you." As the others raised their hats, he 
 added: "It may rain. If preferred, we 
 can get under cover." 
 
 Saraguine, withdrawing a glove, stretched 
 his hand horizontally and looked at the sky. 
 
 "A little mist," he announced. "It is 
 nothing." 
 
 "Good," Louradour rejoined. "There is 
 then nothing to detain us and no better place 
 than the court over there. You have the 
 foils, Le Hillel?" 
 
 For answer the green bundle was dis 
 played. 
 
THE DUEL 169 
 
 At once, with the French observance of 
 what is correct or, more exactly, of what is 
 so considered, gravely, dumbly, in two de 
 tachments, the eight men proceeded to the 
 tennis court where four of them, gathering 
 together, consulted. 
 
 Welden took off his coat and waistcoat 
 and tossed them on a bench. He undid his 
 collar, opened his shirt, rolled up a sleeve 
 and was rolling the other when he paused, 
 arrested by a remark overheard. 
 
 "I say, Le Hillel," he called. "What is 
 all that about Aquaviva s holding a stick 
 within reach of our foils? To prevent an ac 
 cident, is it? Well then, be good enough to 
 say that I will submit to nothing of the kind. 
 I am not here to learn how to fence. It was 
 for a thing of this sort that I did learn." 
 
 Welden spoke in English which Aquaviva 
 did not understand and which Saraguine 
 who was talking to Louradour did not hear. 
 
 Malakoff heard. 
 
170 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 The remark, perfectly audible to him, 
 equally intelligible, carried a significance of 
 its own. He knew that Welden could ride, 
 he took it for granted that he could shoot, 
 that he could handle a sword was, he had 
 thought, within the range of possibilities, 
 but that he could fence had never occurred 
 to him. It was for that reason he had chosen 
 foils. A poke in the ribs and easily, in no 
 time, he had fancied he would be done with 
 him. These ideas aiding and fortified more 
 over by two good seconds, he had come to 
 this meeting, as he had gone to others, with 
 out the shadow of a preoccupation, with the 
 view merely to the transaction of an entirely 
 formal and tiresome affair. 
 
 Now, however, at the remark and at the 
 sight of the man bare-necked, bare-armed, 
 supple and vigorous, looking very much 
 alive and equally deadly, the ideas he had 
 had evaporated, his rank fell from him like 
 a cloak, his titles like bits of armour, and in 
 
THE DUEL 171 
 
 that nakedness, he shivered. Before him 
 surged the abrupt apparition of death. 
 
 For one moment, that apparition, the in 
 struments, bands, compresses, antiseptics 
 enough for an ambulance which Dr. Mey 
 er and his colleague were taking from their 
 bags, grotesquely but poignantly main 
 tained. 
 
 Then at once, the cultivated sentiment of 
 form came, asserted itself, rescued him. 
 With that air which he could assume, that 
 appearance of being surrounded by lackeys 
 ready, at a gesture, to shut the door in any 
 one s face, he took off his coat, undid his 
 collar, rolled up his sleeves. That done, he 
 looked again at Welden who was looking at 
 him. 
 
 "I will see what he knows," Welden was 
 thinking. "Then, in two minutes, Bon jour !" 
 
 Concerning himself he had that entire ab 
 sence of apprehension which comes to some 
 men from confidence, to others from indif- 
 
172 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 ference. Both left him as much at ease as 
 though he were about to play polo. 
 
 Aquaviva, meanwhile, who had unwilling 
 ly yielded to the objection which Le Hill el 
 transmitted, but who had tossed with him 
 for the choice of arms and place, approached 
 now with the foils which he offered, first to 
 Malakoff, whom he stationed fronting the 
 arch of the entrance, and then to Welden 
 who, in facing Malakoff, faced also the 
 house. Yet, as there was no sun, the ad 
 vantage to either was negligible. 
 
 "Are you ready?" Saraguine asked. 
 
 Welden felt the point of his steel. It was 
 sharp as a needle. He advanced toward 
 Malakoff and both fell into position. 
 
 "On guard!" the prince called. "Go!" 
 
 The foils, united for an instant at the ends 
 by Le Hillel, now were seeking each other, 
 crossing, clashing, functioning with light 
 movements of the wrist. 
 
 Welden, taller than Malakoff, perfectly 
 
THE DUEL 178 
 
 trained, perfectly tranquil, maintained the 
 athlete s easy poise and, while his wrist 
 moved, looked pitilessly at his adversary. 
 As yet however he attempted nothing de 
 cisive. His parries, effected always in the 
 smallest possible circle, were as clean, rapid 
 and precise as though, with a buttoned foil 
 before him, he were on the boards, in an ordi 
 nary bout. But in parrying merely, he 
 forced Malakoff to show his hand, to tell 
 what he knew, to expose the varieties of his 
 play. 
 
 These were of the school, classic but not 
 brilliant, and Malakoff, at the sight of those 
 circles, at the sight of that steel which, when 
 not describing them, advanced and returned 
 in a line almost geometrically straight, saw 
 that he had to deal not only with a swords 
 man but with a swordsman of the very first 
 class. On the part of an American he had 
 counted on nothing of the kind. At the 
 evidence of it his sense of nudity increased. 
 
174 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 He felt not only wholly naked but horribly 
 insecure. The episode which he had regard 
 ed as an entirely formal and tiresome affair 
 had rapidly assumed the proportions of an 
 assassination. 
 
 "Halt!" cried Saraguine. 
 
 Malakoff was livid. Visibly he perspired, 
 audibly he panted and on his forearm was 
 a thin red line. 
 
 "You are touched," the prince added. 
 
 The wound was examined. It was but a 
 scratch and so slight that it did not require 
 even to be staunched. 
 
 Welden, in an undertone, said with a 
 smile to Le Hillel: "I know him now. In a 
 moment I will pin a carnation in his 
 shirt/ 
 
 Thoughtlessly while speaking, he had 
 rested the point of the foil on the ground. 
 Dr. Meyer approached and tenderly with 
 a little sponge disinfected it. 
 
 "On guard!" Saraguine called and, as 
 
THE DUEL 175 
 
 the two men fell into position again, again 
 he called: "Go." 
 
 The foils met as before. Malakoff, to 
 hide the nakedness of his debility, masked 
 himself behind the hilt, and parried only 
 until after a counter-disengage from quatre 
 to tierce, not finding Welden s blade, he 
 lunged. But the foil, manoeuvred by an 
 other and surer hand than his, deflected. 
 An unawaited riposte touched him on the 
 breast and, as he backed from the prick, a 
 return sudden and violent ran him through 
 the throat. 
 
 Before him, the double doors, the blazoned 
 arch, the high white wall, soared in the air. 
 They came to him, fell on him, bore him 
 down. From under him the earth slid gen 
 tly. The savour of something acrid filled his 
 mouth. Above him were peering faces and 
 fluttering hands. These blankly fainted. 
 In that early morning it was night. 
 
 Welden looked at the prostrate form and 
 
176 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 nodded at it. From the street beyond there 
 floated a cry, trailing and musical, the call of 
 an itinerant offering to repair broken porce 
 lain. Otherwise in the silence of the fragrant 
 garden there was all of nature s unconcern 
 for the idiot agitations of man. 
 
 Save Welden, every one, Dr. Meyer in 
 cluded, had got about Malakoff. Welden, 
 who could see of him now but the veneered 
 sole of a shoe, stuck his foil under his arm 
 and went, buttoning his shirt on the way, to 
 the bench where he had tossed his coat. The 
 tableau behind him differed not at all from 
 one that he had seen on the train. It was an 
 old acquaintance and he nodded once 
 more. 
 
 At the bench he put the foil down and, 
 getting a cigarette from his coat, lighted it. 
 
 Springingly Le Hillel approached. He 
 had with him the long green bag in which 
 now was the other foil. 
 
 "You are wounded!" he exclaimed. 
 
THE DUEL 177 
 
 Welden, expelling a puff of smoke into 
 the damp, sweet air, stared at him. 
 
 "I never was better in my life." 
 
 "But look at yourself." 
 
 Welden did look. Beneath his left arm 
 his shirt was red. He laughed. 
 
 "That comes from the foil, from my foil. 
 Here, take it and put it with the other one." 
 
 In a moment he had his coat on, his collar 
 and neckcloth readjusted. 
 
 "Where is my stick?" he asked. 
 
 "Your stick? In the motor probably. 
 Shall we go?" 
 
 But now Louradour, detaching himself 
 from the others, advanced. He looked at 
 Welden. 
 
 "Monsieur, I may compliment you and 
 reassure you also. M. de Mai " 
 
 "Is he alive?" Welden, strangling an 
 oath, threw out. 
 
 Louradour, pressing together a thumb 
 and forefinger, exhibited them. 
 
178 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "By that much! The carotid artery just 
 escaped. Allons! So much the better. In 
 no time, in three weeks, he will be on his 
 feet." 
 
 Silently Welden cursed. But Loura- 
 dour s thumb and forefinger had separated, 
 a hand was extended which Welden shook, 
 and then, with Le Hillel, he passed on 
 through the slowly opening doors to the 
 purring car without. 
 
 "There s your stick," said Le Hillel as 
 they reached it. 
 
 Welden looked at the sky. "It s rain 
 ing," he announced. 
 
 "What do you care?" said Le Hillel as 
 both got into the machine and he called: 
 "Rue de la Paix." 
 
 "Personally, not a rap," Welden an 
 swered. "But I race to-day at Chantilly. 
 If it keeps on it may interfere with the 
 others." 
 
 Le Hillel considered him admiringly. 
 
THE DUEL 179 
 
 "Gourmand!" he cried. "This morning you 
 nearly killed a man, this afternoon you will 
 nearly kill a horse. That s fine, very 
 fine." 
 
 Welden shrugged his shoulders. To 
 change the subject he asked: "What became 
 of the little chap?" 
 
 "Meyer! Good Lord! I forgot the poor 
 devil. After I drop you, I ll go back for 
 him. By the way, his fee is fifty francs. 
 Malakoff s man will come higher. Did you 
 notice that he was decorated? That means 
 a hundred." 
 
 "Yes, confound it; and he ll earn it. I 
 thought I had spared him that. If I had 
 known in time I believe I would have fin 
 ished his client as he lay there." 
 
 Le Hillel laughed. "No, you wouldn t, 
 and, anyway, we would not have let you. 
 Besides, why be so bloodthirsty? You 
 fought like a god, now you will ride like 
 a demon. I would give a red pippin to see 
 
180 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 you. By George ! I would give two of them, 
 only" 
 
 "Only what?" 
 
 With a little modest air Le Hillel pulled 
 at his cuff. 
 
 "A lady is to lunch with me." 
 
 "Here s the fifty," said Welden, who 
 meanwhile had got the money out. 
 
 Le Hillel pocketed it. "Shall I see you 
 to-morrow?" 
 
 There are morrows that never dawn. 
 What is more notable, there are men who 
 know they will not. But Welden nodded 
 and shortly, when the car stopped again at 
 his hotel, he thanked Le Hillel, who whirled 
 away. 
 
IX 
 THE RACE 
 
 / 
 
 After one blue brief moment, the fore 
 noon died, suffocated with clouds. The 
 agony of the day melted into rain. The 
 drops, thin and hurried, fell in sheets, dra 
 ping the trees with humid fringes, pouring 
 their melancholy on Chantilly s sandy soil 
 and, as Welden, in breeches and boots, drove 
 up from the station, they added a dreariness 
 of their own to the dreariness that was his. 
 
 To greet him came the pungent odour of 
 stables, the clean smell of wet turf. He had 
 too a glimpse of dripping ostlers, the vista 
 of a vacant lawn, of a miniature tribune and 
 of a course, punctuated by fences that cir 
 cled the grounds. But, in lieu of the care 
 less women, the careful men, the line of 
 drags, carriages and cars that ordinarily 
 
182 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 would have been there, there was but gloom. 
 Instead of clattering hoofs, ripples of laugh 
 ter and mounting cries, there was silence and 
 the falling rain. 
 
 At the perron of a gaunt, grey house, ugly 
 and comfortable, the cab stopped. As Wei- 
 den got out, there flew up a covered motor 
 from which Cantire and another man 
 alighted. 
 
 Cantire, like Welden, was in riding dress. 
 
 "Hello!" he cried. "Rather rotten, isn t 
 it?" Indicating his companion he added: 
 "You know Lord Ferrers?" 
 
 "Met you at Melton," said the latter, ad 
 vancing toward Welden, his hand out 
 stretched. 
 
 He was tall, slim, very fair. He wore a 
 monocle and spoke with a slight stutter. 
 
 Welden, recalling some incident, men 
 tioned it and both laughed. Meanwhile the 
 door opened. All three passed into a hall 
 where immediately de Dol appeared. 
 
THE RACE 183 
 
 "But!" the Frenchman, in French, ex 
 claimed. "What good wind brings youl 
 You received my dispatch?" he continued, 
 looking as he spoke from Welden s boots to 
 Cantire s breeches. "The race is postponed. 
 Kara Saraguine and Aquaviva telegraphed 
 yesterday asking me to put it off. Think 
 ing you would agree I wired you both at 
 Deauville." 
 
 "To the Villa Portugaise?" said Cantire. 
 "It s closed. The duchess chucked the 
 whole thing. Why, I haven t an idea. 
 Have you?" he asked, turning to Welden. 
 
 "Not the faintest." 
 
 "Of course not. How should you? I re 
 member now, you went up to Paris the day 
 before. There must have been the deuce of 
 a row. Malakoff took the first train yester 
 day. Aquaviva and Saraguine went with 
 him, I believe, but the rest of us straggled 
 on at noon." 
 
 "You were saying?" intervened de Dol, 
 
184 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 whom the conversation, carried on in Eng 
 lish, had left in the dark. "But, I pray you, 
 come this way." 
 
 Moving aside he motioned them into a 
 room hung with etchings and photographs 
 of sporting scenes and horses. There was a 
 table there, a divan, several straight-backed 
 chairs and the frame of a horse, wooden and 
 articulated. 
 
 "You were saying?" he repeated. 
 
 Cantire, in French, summarised the mat 
 ter for him. 
 
 De Dol raised his hands. "But! It is un 
 believable! There, one would say, was a 
 household veritably united. I did not grasp 
 why these gentlemen wired, yet it could not 
 have been because of what you tell me, nor 
 could they have foreseen the rain. Have 
 you seen them since?" 
 
 Cantire shook his head. He had strad 
 dled the wooden horse. Lord Ferrers was 
 on the divan, Welden on a chair. 
 
THE RACE 185 
 
 De Dol turned. "Have you, Monsieur 
 Welden?" 
 
 Welden nodded. 
 
 "And they said nothing about the race?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "It is unbelievable!" 
 
 "They could not very well," Welden re 
 sumed. "I was having a word with Mala- 
 koff and they were acting for him." 
 
 "The deuce!" cried Cantire, sliding from 
 the horse. "A duel! And you not even 
 pinked!" 
 
 He laughed. The idea of it pleased him. 
 His grandfather was a duke, a real one, a 
 stately old man with a head empty but 
 noble. Whether on that account or for 
 other reasons is immaterial, but he had 
 always thought Malakoff a mucker. It was 
 not on his account he had gone to Deauville. 
 It was for Sally. 
 
 "But!" exclaimed de Dol, his mouth 
 agape. A little panorama was unfolding 
 
186 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 before him Welden and Sally surprised 
 in amorous conversation by Sally s husband. 
 "And Malakoff ?" 
 
 "He will be all right shortly." 
 
 As Welden spoke, de Dol bowed slowly to 
 an advancing understanding of it all. Mal 
 akoff s seconds, aware of the conversation 
 and foreseeing that for at least one of the 
 principals the duel would be damaging had, 
 for that reason, asked that the race be post 
 poned. 
 
 "All the same," he affably rejoined, "It 
 was most amiable of you to come. When it 
 rains one s friends are doubly welcome." 
 
 Welden turned to Cantire. "Are you 
 afraid of a wetting?" 
 
 "Good Lord, no, why?" 
 
 "Our horses are here, if we don t race now 
 we won t race at all. I will back myself 
 against you. I will back myself against 
 Ferrers too, if he will. M. de Dol can give 
 him a mount." 
 
THE RACE 187 
 
 "Done," said Cantire. "Let s make it a 
 fiver." 
 
 Lord Ferrers dropped his monocle. "Not 
 for me, thanks, but I ll hold the stakes." 
 
 "You were saying?" asked de Dol, who 
 had caught his name but who otherwise was 
 again in the dark and that too despite the 
 fact that a flash of intense vividness lit the 
 room, one which a great crash followed in 
 stantly. 
 
 "It will be clearing shortly," said Ferrers, 
 rising from the divan and peering through a 
 window. "I say," he called, "I believe it is." 
 
 De Dol meanwhile, to whom Welden had 
 translated the gist of it and who thought 
 him and Cantire crazy, was giving the neces 
 sary orders. 
 
 Welden got from his chair and joined the 
 others at the window. The rain had ceased. 
 In the west was the glow of renaissant day. 
 From a tree near by water was falling in 
 little drops, soft and multiple. Overhead 
 
188 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 in the still neutral sky, long ribbons of 
 ravens formed themselves into black wreaths 
 and sombre garlands. Welden, to whom 
 the visible existed, considered the signs 
 which it is perhaps their mysterious duty to 
 convey. 
 
 But now a footman appeared with rain 
 coats and a lad from the stables, touching 
 his forehead, just showed his nose. 
 
 "The horses are here," said de Dol. "Will 
 you have a coat, monsieur?" he asked of 
 Ferrers. 
 
 The latter displayed an umbrella that 
 was thin as a walking-stick. 
 
 "Thanks, no. This will do me." 
 
 De Dol however had himself helped into 
 a great-coat, took a fat umbrella besides, 
 swung a field glass about him and, accom 
 panied by the others, went out to the perron 
 before which stablemen swarmed and the 
 hunters stood. 
 
 The course began the throw of a stone be- 
 
THE RACE 189 
 
 yond. While Welden and Cantire exam 
 ined the girths, verified the stirrups, looked 
 to the bits and bridles, Ferrers and de Dol 
 passed on. Before they reached the stand, 
 Cantire and Welden were in the saddle. 
 
 "I say, Ferrers," Cantire eaUed. "You 
 give the signal, will you?" 
 
 "Very good," the Englishman answered. 
 "Now, then, steady." 
 
 He pulled a rope. Before the flag could 
 fall, Welden s horse, over zealously, had 
 bolted. 
 
 Welden got him in hand, turned him, 
 brought him back, flattering him with pats 
 on the shoulder. 
 
 "Vive 1 Angleterre!" shouted de Dol. 
 "Vive 1 Amerique!" 
 
 "And vive la France!" Welden and Can- 
 tire, almost in unison, responded. 
 
 De Dol laughed with satisfaction. He 
 still thought them mad and said as much to 
 Ferrers. 
 
190 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 The latter inserted his monocle. "The 
 going does not seem so bad and the obstacles 
 are not tremendous." 
 
 He spoke in French, very correctly, but 
 with so marked a British accent, that he 
 might as well have replied in English. 
 De Dol thought he was agreeing with him 
 and laughed again. 
 
 "Steady!" Ferrers called and for the sec 
 ond time pulled the flag-rope. 
 
 This time they were off, taking the sticks 
 as though there were nothing there, clearing 
 them, in spite of the rain, easily, without 
 effort. 
 
 De Dol followed them through his glass, 
 Ferrers through his monocle. 
 
 Beyond, the country stretched, inert and 
 dolent. In the west the glow had height 
 ened. Overhead, the darker sky was veined 
 with flashes thin and sudden. The ravens, 
 assembled now in screaming flight, shot 
 southward. 
 
THE RACE 191 
 
 Quickly but quietly Ferrers swore. Can- 
 tire was down. 
 
 "I awaited it!" cried de Dol. But at once 
 he could see that the boy was up and in a 
 moment that he .was on and off again. 
 
 Welden now was leading. Blazes tore 
 on. The splendid brute, with his impudent 
 eye and shoulders like the top of a hay 
 stack, had covered the course; he was near- 
 ing the stand when, just as he was about to 
 take the final fence, there came a flash 
 vivider than any, a bolt so neighbourly and 
 dazzling that it looked raspberry, and 
 whether it unnerved the horse or the man 
 or both, in any event Welden bent heavily 
 forward and together, turning a somersault, 
 they tumbled. 
 
 For a second, without sense of injury or 
 sensation of pain, Welden lingered. Then 
 his two selves, the conscious and the sub 
 conscious, scattered, evaporated, ceased to 
 know. -Again on that day it was night. 
 
192 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "God of gods!" cried de Dol. "I said 
 they were mad!" 
 
 Ferrers, extracting his monocle, vaulted 
 to the ground, where, as from the ground 
 itself, stablemen came swarming, while, over 
 all, indifferently, from disrupted clouds, the 
 sun looked out. 
 
X 
 
 THE DEVIL 
 
 A surgeon obtained, it was found that 
 Welden had a fracture of the ankle, a frac 
 ture of the collarbone and a fracture of the 
 skull. 
 
 The surgeon, Dr. Binet-Valmer, thought 
 the first fracture trite; the second, stupid. 
 Had there been but these he would have 
 abandoned Welden to other hands. But the 
 third fracture had the high merit of interest 
 ing this man whose country-seat was near 
 by and who was one of the lights of French 
 science. 
 
 "He won t die to-day," he absently an 
 nounced. 
 
 As for the rest, a phrase which, for the 
 benefit of the ignoramuses about him, he 
 employed to designate the cerebral cortex 
 
194- DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 that marvellous pulp behind the forehead 
 through which the objective changes of the 
 external world are, by some undiscovered 
 witchery, converted into the subjective 
 changes of consciousness concerning that 
 magical mystery and the fate of it, he had 
 an opinion which he kept to himself. 
 
 The examination concluded, he addressed 
 the Comte de Dol precisely as though the 
 poor man were a lackey. He did not regard 
 him as such, he considered him an insect. 
 The Earl of Ferrers and the Honourable 
 Mull Cantire were to him two insects 
 more. Welden was not an insect or even 
 an entity, he was a Case. 
 
 "An ambulance," he ordered. 
 
 But de Dol shook his head. The frac 
 tures had occurred on his grounds, to a 
 guest of his bidding, and, with that decent 
 sentiment of what decency is which the 
 Arabs discovered, he had Welden tended in 
 his house. 
 
THE DEVIL 195 
 
 Through the enigmatic laws of life any 
 kindness is repaid in pain. De Dol never 
 actively regretted the charity, though cer 
 tainly had he wished he might have, for 
 when the report of it all had gone abroad, a 
 woman, very modishly attired, emerged 
 from a cab at the perron and demanded 
 to be taken instantly to where Welden 
 was. 
 
 Obviously the lady appertained to that 
 class which the French describe as the top 
 of the basket. But de Dol s footman knew 
 his business. 
 
 "Perfectly, madame," he replied. "Will 
 madame give herself the trouble to pass this 
 way?" 
 
 Whereupon he showed her into the room 
 hung with pictures of sporting scenes and 
 horses. 
 
 From the threshold he added: "Will 
 madame say whom I am to announce?" 
 
 "The Duchess of Malakoff." 
 
196 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 The man bowed and vanished. Presently 
 he returned, ushering de DoL 
 
 "But! But!" exclaimed the latter, shuf 
 fling in, affecting to seem pleased yet suc 
 ceeding so meagrely that, to cover his em 
 barrassment, he raised and bent over the 
 gloved hand which Sally put out, wondering 
 all the time what the devil he could do with 
 her. 
 
 Sally told him. In her sweetest voice she 
 said: "Take me to him, please." 
 
 De Dol, sparring for wind, protested, 
 "Duchess, he is unconscious." 
 
 Sally motioned at the door. "I know. I 
 have brought a trained nurse. We will take 
 care of him together." 
 
 De Dol, sparring still, again protested. 
 "Duchess, I pray you, consider your posi 
 tion." 
 
 Sally lifted her little chin. "He consid 
 ered that. He fought for me. What I con 
 sider is his condition." 
 
THE DEVIL 197 
 
 But now de Dol had got his wind. For 
 a moment, thoughtfully, with kind, honest 
 eyes he looked in hers. Then he went at 
 her. 
 
 "Duchess, believe me, never intentionally 
 have I refused a lady anything. It is re 
 grettable to be obliged to refuse you. But 
 your husband is my friend. He has been 
 gravely injured by this gentleman. If you 
 will not consider your position, I pray you 
 consider mine. Can you not see that it 
 would be intolerable were I to do as you 
 ask?" 
 
 Sally, floored but not defeated, leaned 
 from the chair in which she sat, flung her 
 arms on the table beside her, sank her head 
 there, and audibly began to cry. 
 
 Men who face death unflinchingly, quail 
 at a woman s tears. What is worse women 
 know it. Sally used hers much as though 
 they constituted a stick and de Dol, bruised 
 and belaboured, cursed himself that he had 
 
198 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 not, at the start, invented some ukase of the 
 surgeon to which she must unquestionably 
 bow. Yet, after all, he reflected, the sur 
 geon certainly would pronunciamento, and 
 that edict he could hold in reserve should 
 other tactics which then occurred to him, 
 fail. 
 
 Timorously he approached and gingerly, 
 with one finger, touched her. 
 
 At the attention, Sally s slight frame 
 shook. 
 
 "Duchess, calm yourself. Calm yourself, 
 I pray you. If you will but calm yourself, 
 there is a little idea that has come to me 
 which may result in what you wish. Will 
 you let me tell you? Will you?" 
 
 But Sally felt now too securely in 
 trenched to yield to what, perhaps, were 
 mere treacherous cajolements. She con 
 tinued to weep or appeared to, yet, apparent 
 ly also in a fashion more broken, leaving in 
 vitingly between the sobs increasing inter- 
 
THE DEVIL 199 
 
 vals during which he could speak and which, 
 if what he said were not agreeable, she, with 
 renewed activity, could curtail. 
 
 Warily but boldly he utilised one such 
 pause. 
 
 "Duchess, let us see. Be reasonable 
 enough to listen. From the moment when 
 this gentleman was carried from that di 
 van to where he now is, I have not seen him, 
 no one has, save the surgeon, the aids and 
 imfirmieres, nor, until he is conscious do I 
 believe that the surgeon will permit anyone 
 to see him, no one, not even the man s own 
 mother were she here. If, therefore, I can 
 not do as you would wish me, it is not merely 
 for your sake and my sake, it is for his. But 
 when he is better, when such danger as there 
 is has been passed, enfin! in a little while, I, 
 I who speak to you, will not be here. Then 
 who comes and who goes, I do not know. I 
 do not inquire. It is my intendant who has 
 charge of such things. Do you appreciate, 
 
200 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Duchess? My intendant has not the honour 
 of your acquaintance; he is not a friend of 
 the duke. Let us suppose then that of a 
 morning a lady arrives and says: I have 
 come to sit with this gentleman. I am his 
 sister, his promised, his chere amie, his what 
 ever you like. My intendant says: But 
 what then? But certainly! And pat at is, 
 patatas. And behold the lady who then cre 
 ates the rain and the fine weather. Does 
 that say nothing to you, Duchess? Does it 
 not seem well machined? Later, I return. 
 My intendant says: The sister, the prom 
 ised, the chere amie, the whatever you like 
 of the sick gentleman has been here. And 
 I say: That does not regard me. I wash 
 my hands. 
 
 Long since the intervals between the sobs 
 had so elongated that the sobs themselves 
 had ceased. Sally s bowed head was lifted. 
 For a lady who had wept so profusely her 
 eyes were phenomenally bright. 
 
THE DEVIL 201 
 
 "Yes," de Dol resumed. "That is what 
 I say to him. I say: I wash my hands. 
 
 "You promise I may come?" 
 
 "But no, Duchess. But no. I do not 
 promise. It is not for me to promise any 
 thing. I have nothing to promise about. I 
 play that I am dead. It is when I am gone 
 for the lady of whom I speak to do as she 
 may wish. Of my departure she can in 
 form herself. It is easy as Good-day." 
 
 Sally stood up. She held out her hand 
 and looking at him through her oblique, 
 half -closed and entirely tearless eyes said 
 sweetly: "You re a dear." 
 
 De Dol took the hand. Bending over it 
 he sighed, deeply, with relief. 
 
 "A cup of tea, Duchess? A glass of 
 wine?" 
 
 Sally, shaking her head at the offer, 
 sighed too. 
 
 "Forgive me, if I have seemed to in 
 sist." 
 
202 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Duchess, I pray of you, it is for me to 
 ask your pardon." 
 
 Sally moved on. A moment or two later 
 when de Dol after accompanying her to the 
 cab, saw to it that she really got in, really 
 drove off, he sighed afresh and muttered: 
 
 "Let the devil catch me again if he can!" 
 
XI 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE SWAN 
 
 To those about Welden it was as though 
 he were dead, drowned rather, sunk into 
 depths where nothing can follow, into those 
 deepest depths where life is without form, 
 without colour, without sensation of any 
 kind. But presently either because of their 
 efforts, or because of influences not higher; 
 but the reverse, because he had not suffered 
 enough, death, loosening its hold, retreated ; 
 life beckoned, calling him from where he 
 swooned, and imperceptibly, little by little, 
 after infinite hesitations, relapses, retrievals, 
 drifting upward from those depths, he 
 awoke. 
 
 Where he was he did not know. What 
 had happened, he could not tell. He did not 
 
204 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 try. He did not care. He had but one wish, 
 to sink back again and sleep. But again life 
 caught and called him, wrapped him, rocked 
 him, accustoming him gradually to its sub 
 tleties, reconciling him to it and to himself* 
 
 It was at this juncture that Sally de 
 clared herself a miserable woman. In the 
 opinion of the world she deserved to be. 
 The opinion of the world is very valuable. 
 The fried mixture of falsities on which it 
 daily breakfasts would induce apoplexy in 
 any entity less robust. In its distinguished 
 opinion Sally s husband had fought because 
 of her with a man who was engaged to one 
 of her intimate friends and whom she had 
 inveigled from her. 
 
 Even in the way we live now such behav 
 iour is not regarded as nice. Yet any 
 woman might have done as much, and more 
 and worse, and been smiled at, provided only 
 she and her husband continued, outwardly 
 at least, on good terms. But on the open 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE SWAN 205 
 scandal of scandalous ruptures the world, 
 
 
 
 which if credulous is also discreet, turns 
 always its ponderous back. 
 
 It turned it on Sally. Though young, 
 rich, good-looking and a duchess, the atti 
 tude of the world justified her declaration 
 and the knowledge that it did gave Sally s 
 mother an attack of indignation morbus of 
 which the nausea lasted through twelve pages 
 of pen and ink. 
 
 For final hiccough there was this: "You 
 have disgraced me. No decent person will 
 ever receive you unless you return to your 
 husband at once." 
 
 Mrs. Kandy was then at Aix. The par 
 oxysm dispatched, she felt better. Sally 
 was then at Chantilly. The eructation re 
 ceived, she felt no worse. Lodged at the 
 time at the Sign of the Swan, she had with 
 her Harris and Perkins. She had also her 
 thoughts. These, if not many, were pleas 
 ant. 
 
206 DAUGHTERS OF, THE RICH 
 
 Among them was the fact that Mr. Ridge- 
 way, who had conducted the delicate ar 
 rangements of her marriage, was occupied 
 with the still more delicate details of her di 
 vorce. Before going to Deauville she had 
 consulted him. On her return she had con 
 sulted him again. She had done better. She 
 had retained him. He had assured her that 
 she could be free. 
 
 He was as good as his word. Evidence 
 of the conversation that had occurred on the 
 night of July the Fourth sufficed. But with 
 that regard for the honour of families and 
 the repute of women which Anglo-Saxon 
 tribunals lack, during the punctilious and 
 brief debates, the court, in withholding any 
 mention of the co-respondent s name, ob 
 scured the lady from the public. 
 
 That is but gentlemanly. None the less 
 the obscurity was one in which the world saw 
 many things, the obviousness of the fact, for 
 instance, that Sally had but stolen a march 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE SWAN 207 
 
 on Malakoff who, gallantly, had desisted 
 from counter charges. 
 
 Sally did not attempt to undeceive the 
 world which would not have believed her had 
 she tried. She did not try, however. It 
 would not have suited her book to do so. She 
 had another and a more agreeable task. 
 
 De Dol meanwhile had gone, summer was 
 going and Welden, issuing from the great 
 iced bath of death, remounted to life s sur 
 face. Among other lesions, there had been 
 an injury to the occipital cortex which re 
 sulted in impairment of vision. For a time 
 he could not distinguish objects. When he 
 succeeded, the first thing he saw was Sally. 
 
 He resented her presence. He regarded 
 it as an intrusion. Moreover, the reason of 
 it was beyond him. Then from being a phe 
 nomenon objectionable and occult, it became 
 a phase of his condition, one that primarily 
 he accepted from sheer inability to avoid 
 and finally from the familiarising effects of 
 
208 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 habit. It is related that men who entered 
 the Bastille as though it were their grave, 
 had to be afterward ejected by force. They 
 had got used to it and what human beings 
 get used to they get to like. That was the 
 case with Welden. In accounting for Sal 
 ly s visits he forgot her former ambuscades 
 and attributed present attentions to the ef 
 fort he had made to rid the world of Mala- 
 koff. Anyway, what did it matter? Sally 
 made his prison endurable. She was blithe 
 as a humming bird. On the end of her fin 
 gers was every kind of pretty gesture. 
 They were alert too, very divinatory. They 
 knew what he wanted as soon as he did. 
 They omitted to be in the way. They grew 
 discreet. Recognising their usefulness, 
 they ceased to flutter. They took them 
 selves away, and away remained, until their 
 return was solicited. 
 
 When that occurred Sally, even to the 
 world, could no longer affect to be a mis- 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE SWAN 209 
 
 erable woman. She radiated smiles, she ex 
 haled good humour. Dr. Binet-Valmer, 
 who thoroughly approved of the presence of 
 young gentlewomen in the bedrooms of con 
 valescents, encouraged her visits. He knew 
 she was only an insect but he realised that 
 she was a pretty one. Without any faith in 
 drugs whatever, with hardly any faith in 
 anything, he yet had confidence in the tonic 
 of prettiness, smiles and good humour. The 
 infirmieres had too. The intendant had 
 also. To them, to the trainers and stable 
 men, Sally was the right sort. There was 
 no end to her presents and pourboires. 
 
 Such were her occupations. In addition 
 she had another. She, too, was having a run. 
 
 The post was a good bit off. Between her 
 and it were wide ditches and tall fences. At 
 any moment a tremendous crumpler might 
 occur. But behind her were other obstacles, 
 bigger and wider still, timber which she 
 thought she could not take and which she 
 
210 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 had cleared without effort. Moreover, now 
 she was nearing the home stretch. Provided 
 she kept her seat, kept, too, a hand light, 
 yet steady, luck might land her a winner, 
 and at it she went, full tilt, straight ahead, 
 at a pace so clinking that it accounted per 
 haps for her smiles and good humour. 
 
 It was not because of these radiations, 
 hut because of others, because it was his 
 destiny to do so, that Welden no longer re 
 sented her presence. He accepted it, but 
 with that curious lassitude which Death, in 
 revenge it may be, puts on those for whom 
 it has come and not got. 
 
 Apathetic and indifferent, he rejected 
 the news of the day, ignored the cataclysms 
 in Wall street, refused to see Cantire, Le 
 Hillel, Lord Ferrers and the string of visi 
 tors that called. But apart from the apathy, 
 apart, too, from the debility incident to his 
 condition, health had returned. Long since 
 his collar-bone had been mended and his 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE SWAN 211 
 
 ankle, treated after the setting to massage 
 instead of plaster, was now but a little stiff. 
 
 Presently, Sally prompting, these things 
 he recognised and recognising also that fur 
 ther delay would constitute a breach of hos 
 pitality, he wrote de Dol his thanks, asked 
 him as an additional obligation to accept 
 his hunter and, after distributing princely 
 presents to the service, had himself trans 
 ported to the Sign of the Swan. 
 
 "What you need," Sally said to him that 
 evening, "is a good, long sea trip. Dr. 
 Binet-Valmer told me so. Don t you agree 
 with him?" 
 
 They were at table in her sitting room at 
 the Hotel du Cygne where, served by Har 
 ris, they had dined. The cloth had not yet 
 been removed but Harris had gone. Sally 
 wore a gown in the corsage of which ochre 
 and lilac were blended. Welden s evening 
 coat fell about him loosely. He was smok 
 ing. 
 
212 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Don t you?" Sally repeated. 
 
 "Yes," he answered. "But hardly alone 
 and for the moment I know no one whom I 
 could ask to go with me." 
 
 Sally smiled, displaying her teeth, bits of 
 mother of pearl, glistening and pointed. 
 
 "You could ask me." 
 
 At this prelude to the Invitation a la 
 valse, Welden shrugged his shoulders. 
 Men generally thought Sally very fetching. 
 Her mauve eyes, oblique and half -closed, 
 might have tempted saints, demons even, 
 with whom she was perhaps akin. But she 
 failed to represent to Welden that which 
 makes some men constant not necessarily to 
 one particular woman but to one particular 
 feminine type. 
 
 "Nonsense," he told her. 
 
 "It is not nonsense at all," Sally, shaking 
 her head and cocking an eye at him, retorted. 
 "Why do you say so?" 
 
 Welden considered the prelude closer. 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE SWAN 213 
 
 After all there was a certain worldly jus 
 tice in it. Maud having taken up with Mal- 
 akoff, it was perhaps nonsense for him to 
 balk at taking up with Malakoff s wife. 
 Jointly and severally they could combine 
 for the payment of old scores. At the same 
 time, between public and private payment, 
 there was a margin. 
 
 "Why do you?" Sally repeated. 
 
 Welden lighted a fresh cigar. "I should 
 be compromising you irretrievably." 
 
 Sally sighed. "You have already," she 
 promptly answered. 
 
 From over the cigar Welden looked at 
 her. About her throat was a string of 
 pearls. One hand that lay invitingly on the 
 table was covered with gems. But from it 
 the pretty gestures had gone, from her face 
 the smiles had passed. She looked virginal 
 and sad, a sort of melancholy angel, only 
 much better dressed than angels usually are. 
 Through her half -closed eyes she watched 
 
DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 him. There had been her visits to de Dol s, 
 he was thinking, but that was her affair. 
 
 "In what way?" he asked. 
 
 "Well, you see, don t you know, every 
 body says the duel was on my ac 
 count." 
 
 That alsoWelden considered. It seemed 
 logical enough. On a certain night Sally 
 had abandoned her husband. Within thirty- 
 six hours he and that husband had fought. 
 Their reasons for fighting no one, save them 
 selves, Sally and Maud could possibly know. 
 Clearly it was logical enough and yet insuf 
 ficient to warrant the full measure of the 
 Invitation. 
 
 "Mrs. Cawtree wrote to me," Sally re 
 sumed, "and Fanny Solferino and my 
 mother. My mother was very violent. My 
 mother said that I had disgraced her. She 
 declared that no decent person would ever 
 receive me, unless 
 
 Sally paused. Like the lady whom she 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE SWAN 215 
 
 was quoting, she sometimes embroidered 
 the truth. 
 
 "Unless " she presently continued, and 
 paused again. 
 
 But, as Welden manifested no interest in 
 the proviso, she prodded him. 
 
 "I don t like to tell you." 
 
 Then, seeing that Welden had no inten 
 tion of urging her, she took her courage in 
 her jewelled hand. 
 
 "Unless you marry me." 
 
 Welden had been occupied with the logic 
 of her previous statement, but the unobtru 
 sive modesty of this announcement surprised 
 him from it. 
 
 He removed his cigar. "I had an idea 
 that you were married already." 
 
 Into the melancholy of Sally s face there 
 crept a smile. "I was," she answered. "I 
 am no longer." 
 
 "Ah," said Welden. "Is Malakoff dead?" 
 
 But now the smile in Sally s face deep- 
 
216 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 ened. It burrowed under the melancholy 
 and tossed it aside. She laughed. 
 
 "No, divorced. It was so amusing too. 
 Shall I ten you about it? Shall I? Well, 
 after I put in the petition, the judge had us 
 both see him in private. Ridgeway told me 
 he would. It appears that in divorce cases 
 here the judge takes a sort of fatherly at 
 titude and tries to get the parties to make 
 up and, if you will believe me, he did try. 
 He was so nice about it, too, that you would 
 have thought he was my aunt and Malakoff 
 was so rude you would have thought he was 
 my mother. But the judge was really very 
 nice. And so civil! Dear me, his mouth 
 was just full of madame la duchesse and 
 monsieur de due. Later on, in the decree, he 
 fined his monsieur le due a hundred francs. 
 Don t you think it was amusing?" 
 
 Welden shrugged his shoulders. After 
 the duel it had been grievous to him that he 
 had not killed the man. Now he did not 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE SWAN 217 
 
 care. During the race he had tried to kill 
 himself. There too he had failed. But that 
 also was a matter of indifference. Before 
 either race or duel he had been obsessed by 
 the vision of a pillowed head. It had gone. 
 Though he had failed with Malakoff and 
 failed with himself, he had thoroughly assas 
 sinated that. 
 
 "Don t you think it was amusing?" Sally 
 repeated. 
 
 "You certainly have not been idle," Wei- 
 den replied. "What were the grounds?" 
 
 Sally made a gesture. Though there are 
 things that men do, there are women who do 
 not mention them. 
 
 Welden nodded. "Who was the co?" 
 
 "Who?" cried Sally. "Have you forgot 
 ten already? Don t you remember the night 
 of the Fourth of July?" 
 
 Welden nodded again and knocked the 
 ashes from his cigar. "You are no longer, 
 then, madame la duchesse." 
 
218 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Smilingly Sally stood up. She moved 
 from the table, dropped him a curtsy and 
 sweetly, yet simply, replied: 
 
 "I am Sally Kandy again, and yours if 
 you will have me." 
 
 "Thank you," said Welden, quite as 
 though he had been offered another cup of 
 coffee. "Thank you. But did not this Ridge- 
 way tell you about the Court of Cassation? 
 Malakoff has six months in which to appeal. 
 Of course he will do nothing of the kind. 
 None the less, in the interim, any marriage 
 of yours would be bigamous." 
 
 At that last word Sally flushed and sat 
 down. It is possible that she had miscon* 
 strued its meaning. 
 
 "What a dreadful expression," she ex 
 claimed. "I am sure I never should think 
 of anything so horrid. But, in the interim, 
 as you call it, what is there to prevent us 
 from going to South Africa or, better still, 
 to the East?" 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE SWAN 219 
 
 At the door came a rap. Harris entered, 
 busying himself with the cloth. Welden got 
 up and limped to the window. 
 
 In the park without, leaves were falling, 
 falling from branch to branch; falling slow 
 ly, as with regret; falling undecidedly with 
 precaution. In their faint rustle was a 
 sound such as the steps of fate may make 
 when approaching furtively, a-tiptoe. 
 
 The hesitancy of it filtered into Welden s 
 thoughts. Usually, he knew what he had to 
 do and did it. But illness plays strange 
 tricks and destiny plays others. After all, 
 he told himself, eventually there would be 
 someone else. Perhaps as well then Sally 
 as another. At least she would serve to show 
 to Maud how indifferent he was to her. Even 
 otherwise, how should it matter? How should 
 anything matter any more? 
 
 He turned. Harris had gone. Sally 
 through her half -closed eyes, was watching 
 him. 
 
220 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Very good," he said. "We will go to the 
 Orient since you wish it." 
 
 With a feline twist of the tongue SalJy 
 moistened her lips. She had the sensation 
 of being lifted lightly in the air. It was the 
 last fence. She had reached the post a win 
 ner. 
 
 Alone in his room that night Welden still 
 heard the leaves. They fell slowly, solemn 
 ly, burying the past beneath their slender 
 weight, raising between him and it a veil, 
 tenuous and aerial. Higher it rose, higher 
 still, ever higher until, sinking again, it en 
 veloped memory in it. 
 
 A fortnight later Welden and Sally, at- 
 tended by their servants, embarked from 
 Southampton on a voyage that took them 
 first to India, where they loitered, then to 
 Hong Kong, where they were married and 
 finally to White Peacocks. 
 
 There the journey ended. There, for one 
 of them, eternity began. 
 
PART III 
 AFTERWARD 
 
 I 
 PERSPECTIVES 
 
 "Well, William, how are you? Is Miss 
 Barhyte at home?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, Miss Barhyte has just come in. 
 I hope I see you very well, sir. It s a long 
 time, sir " 
 
 Taking Welden s hat and stick, the serv 
 ant showed him into the library, which ap 
 parently, was unaltered. The cushions on 
 the sofa were as colourful as before. Oppo 
 site, the piano stood, and from the walls pow 
 dered heads looked down. But, from the 
 table, the Sicilians had gone. In place of 
 Greek poetry there was now a book of 
 
222 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 French verse. Otherwise the room was quite 
 as it had been the year previous and, apart 
 from a black band on the sleeve of his grey 
 coat, Welden himself was unchanged. There 
 was the same smile in his eyes, the same glint 
 in his hair, the same appearance of supple 
 ness and strength. 
 
 He had opened the book and was loitering 
 in its languors when William reappeared. 
 
 "I am sorry, sir. I made a mistake. Miss 
 Barhyte is not at home." 
 
 The mistake must have been anticipated. 
 Welden manifested no surprise. 
 
 "Is the general in?" he asked, his eyes still 
 on the book. 
 
 "No, sir. The general is not at home 
 either." 
 
 But now Welden put the book aside and 
 nodded. 
 
 "Give him my compliments and say that 
 I will wait on him at nine to-night. How is 
 he?" 
 
PERSPECTIVES 223 
 
 "Pretty well, sir." The man moved out 
 through the reception room to the marble 
 of the hall, where he handed Welden his hat 
 and stick. "That was a nasty accident he 
 had last summer. He limps a little still. 
 Yes, sir." 
 
 Opening the door, he held it open until 
 Welden reached the street. 
 
 Welden sauntered on. Five days previous 
 he had left Santa Barbara. It was but an 
 hour or two before that he had reached New 
 York. In his head he could still feel the mo 
 tion of the cars. That would pass, he told 
 himself, as all things do. It would pass, as 
 would also pass a girl s disinclination to be 
 at home. 
 
 He sauntered on, turned into Fifth ave 
 nue, and sauntered up. At once, a man whom 
 he knew stopped him, buttonholed, ques 
 tioned, platitudinised. From passing traps 
 and motors, women bowed, two other men 
 joined him and, at the curb, a withered crea- 
 
DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 ture tossed from a barrel-organ a strain of 
 Italian love. 
 
 The men annoyed him. It wearied him 
 to talk about what had happened. It wear 
 ied him as much to be told about stocks. Pre 
 texting a pretext he hailed a hansom and 
 sailed away. 
 
 Presently, at the Plaza, where he had put 
 up, it was comforting to find that his lug 
 gage had arrived. After the philistinism of 
 the West, it was agreeable to be lodged in 
 an artistic inn. After the horrors of a trans 
 continental trip, it was a pleasure to dress 
 at ease. After the convict fare of the Lim 
 ited, food properly served was a relief. Af 
 ter a tragedy, a change of air is good for the 
 nerves. 
 
 Welden, as he sat at table that evening, 
 his recent mourning indicated in his shirt by 
 two small black studs, considered momen 
 tarily these minor gifts of the minor gods. 
 But he had work ahead of him and, at five 
 
PERSPECTIVES 225 
 
 minutes to nine, hailing a hansom, he sailed 
 back to Madison avenue. 
 
 At a door there, as he rang, a melody of 
 Beethoven s which was being played within, 
 ceased abruptly. The door opened and Wil 
 liam, after taking his hat and coat, showed 
 him into the dining-room where, before a 
 wide table, the general sat, looking, as per 
 haps a general should, very fierce. 
 
 "William," he ordered, "close the door be 
 hind you." 
 
 Then, rising, he turned at Welden. 
 
 "Had you left your address this after 
 noon, I would have warned you not to call 
 here. Your conduct has been dastardly. 
 Dastardly! God bless my soul, there is no 
 other word for it." 
 
 He paused, removed his glasses and shook 
 them. 
 
 "After an accident which I experienced 
 and Maud had joined me at Frascati s, you 
 picked a quarrel with Malakoff , induced the 
 
226 DAUGHTERS OF. THE RICH 
 
 duchess to obtain a divorce and married the 
 lady, married her, God bless my soul, when 
 you were engaged to my daughter and to 
 day, your wife barely cold in her grave, you 
 have the impudence to come here. Damn 
 me, sir, if I had acted as you have I would 
 have come expecting the cowhide." 
 
 As the tirade proceeded the general s voice 
 mounted to the diapason of a roar. At its 
 conclusion he stamped a foot. 
 
 "Yes, damn me, the cowhide." 
 
 Immediately, but without heat, Welden 
 took it up. 
 
 "From no other man living would I en 
 dure for an instant that expression, nor yet 
 the one which preceded it. But you are 
 right, right, that is, from your point of view. 
 It would be dastardly, and it would be the 
 cowhide I should expect, if I had acted as 
 you say I have, intentionally." 
 
 "Intentionally," the general shouted. 
 "Intentionally" 
 
PERSPECTIVES 227 
 
 He would have run on but Welden cut in. 
 
 "When your daughter left Deauville I 
 was on my way to Paris. She wrote me of 
 your accident, telling me she was going to 
 you at once, and asking me to join you both 
 at Frascati s " 
 
 "Damn me, sir, this is ancient history." 
 
 Welden nodded. "Yes, to you and to 
 your daughter. But not to me. The letter 
 which your daughter wrote at Deauville on 
 the morning of the Fourth of July, I re 
 ceived less than a fortnight since at Santa 
 Barbara." 
 
 "Even so what of it? They were not 
 dumb at the Malakoff s, I suppose. They 
 all knew of it. Anyone could have told 
 you." 
 
 "General, not only no one told me that 
 your daughter had gone, but I was led to be 
 lieve that she was still there and did not wish 
 to see me." 
 
 "Stuff and nonsense! Do you mean to say 
 
228 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 that you are a born fool? How could any 
 one gammon you with such rubbish?" 
 
 There are explanations which explain 
 nothing. Unhesitatingly Welden advanced 
 one. 
 
 "For the very reason you have given. Be 
 cause I was a fool. But however much of a 
 fool I may have been I am not a knave. 
 Your daughter will appreciate that." 
 
 General Barhyte reached forward and 
 touched a bell. 
 
 "Never," he answered. "I shall not allow 
 you to see her and even if I did, she would 
 refuse to do so." 
 
 The servant entered. 
 
 "William, the door for this gentleman." 
 
 He turned his back, took up an evening 
 paper and sat down. To him Welden had 
 apparently ceased to exist. 
 
 But Welden was thoroughly alive. Pre 
 ceded by William, he passed into the draw 
 ing room and on to the hall. There, after 
 
PERSPECTIVES 229 
 
 getting his hat and coat, instead of going 
 out, he turned into the reception room and 
 went through it to the library beyond. 
 
 At the piano, a sheet of music before her, 
 was a girl who, as he entered, turned slowly 
 and slowly arose. 
 
 Welden, his hat in his hand, his coat on 
 his arm, looked at her. Unlike the room, she 
 had altered. The allurement of her face, the 
 caress which she had exhaled, the charm of 
 manner which always she had conveyed, 
 these emanations were absent. In place of 
 allurement was blankness ; in lieu of the ca 
 ress was rigidity; instead of the charm, a 
 chill. In her eyes and about her mouth was 
 an expression of distant inquiry, an air of 
 saying: Who are you and what do you 
 want? 
 
 Welden, prepared for the situation, began 
 methodically at its demolition. 
 
 "Maud, there has been that between us 
 which I know you will come to believe justi- 
 
230 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 fies me in disregarding any instructions you 
 may have given, your father s orders as well. 
 When I returned the sapphire 
 
 Insecure in her intrenchments the girl let 
 fire. "It was your right to do so. It was 
 a right which I had given you and expressly 
 stipulated that you should use. In return 
 ing it you said everything there was to be 
 said. There can be nothing to add to 
 it." 
 
 "When I returned the sapphire," Welden 
 \continued, "it was because I thought you 
 wished it." 
 
 "You may or may not have been mistaken, 
 but you cannot possibly have been as mis 
 taken in me as I have been in you." 
 
 "When I returned the sapphire," Welden 
 persisted, "it was because I believed I had 
 seen you in Malakoff s arms." 
 
 For a second, with diligent disdain, the 
 girl considered him. Then at once, after the 
 fashion which royalty has devised to signify 
 
PERSPECTIVES 231 
 
 that a conversation is at an end, she moved 
 back. 
 
 Welden had been prepared for that also. 
 
 "Do you recall our last night together?" 
 
 At the memory evoked, the girl coloured 
 and the disdain mounting with the flush, in 
 creased, accentuated by the wantonness of 
 the question. 
 
 "Forgive me for referring to it," Welden 
 added. "But that night when I entered your 
 room, the disposition of it was such that I 
 saw at first but your head. The next night 
 I saw you as before, with this difference 
 however, Malakoff was with you with you 
 I say, for it was but recently I learned that 
 that night you were at Frascati s and that 
 your room was occupied by a Mme. Oppen- 
 sheim, a person whom I did not know ex 
 isted." 
 
 On the music stool behind her the girl sank 
 down. The flush had gone from her face but 
 the disdain remained. 
 
232 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Do you know of her?" Welden asked. 
 
 Maud, without unbending, bent a little; 
 "She reached the villa as I was leaving it." 
 
 "Then you are aware of the resemblance 
 between you. Her hair is precisely the col 
 our of yours. Now do me this favour; put 
 yourself in my place. Had you seen me as 
 I thought I saw you, would you not have 
 acted as I did?" 
 
 The girl straightened herself. "No," she 
 answered shortly. 
 
 "Do you mean that it would not have af 
 fected your relations with me?" 
 
 "I mean nothing of the kind." 
 
 "Without indiscretion, may I ask then 
 what you do mean?" 
 
 "Because I happened to fancy that you 
 were volage, I myself would not have be 
 
 come so." 
 
 "Forgive me, Maud, I do not quite follow 
 
 you." 
 
 "Nor can I allow you, nor do I wish to. 
 
PERSPECTIVES 233 
 
 Admitting your delusion, one by the way 
 which must have been almost self-evident, 
 the slightest effort on your part would have 
 corrected it." 
 
 "Maud, believe me, I had no oppor 
 tunity." 
 
 "I do believe you, your opportunity lay 
 elsewhere." 
 
 "No," Welden protested, "it did not. 
 Moreover, the opportunity to which you re 
 fer came months later, and though utilised 
 then, it was only for the wretchedest ancl 
 therefore the most human of reasons, in or 
 der that I might at least be revenged." 
 
 "On Malakoff ?" the girl tauntingly threw 
 at him. 
 
 "Damn me, sir," some one was angrily 
 calling, "when I instructed my servant to 
 show you the door " 
 
 Welden turned. Before him the general 
 stood. Immediately Maud interposed her 
 self between them. 
 
234 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Father," she said, pushing him as she 
 spoke, toward the adjoining room, "go in 
 there, I must speak to you." 
 
 "You told me," the old man remonstrated, 
 trying vainly to resist. "You told me " 
 
 "I have not a doubt of it," Maud, pushing 
 still, replied. "But I told you also never to 
 believe a word a woman said." 
 
 The door closed suddenly. Welden could 
 at last put down his hat and coat. He had 
 not, he knew, demolished all the intrench- 
 ments, but in view of the girl s defence of 
 him, he f elfthat he had sapped their base. 
 
 He was quite in error. None the less, in 
 a few moments, when Maud-issued unaccom 
 panied from the conflict in the outer room, 
 her parliamentaries there may have suggest 
 ed a temporary truce. She stopped at the 
 table, took up the book of verse, looked at 
 it, replaced it and with tolerable irrelevance 
 remarked : 
 
 "That was very terrible about Sally. 
 
PERSPECTIVES 235 
 
 Have you any suspicion who did it?" 
 
 "No," Welden answered. "None what 
 ever." 
 
 "I ought, I suppose, to condole with you, 
 but I cannot. Neither of you I think be 
 haved very well. She knew about Mme. Op- 
 pensheim even if, as you say, you did not. It 
 was because of her that she got the decree. 
 Everybody knew that. It was not in the 
 papers, but it was common talk. Were you 
 deaf at the time?" 
 
 "Partially," Welden replied. "At Chan- 
 tilly I made rather a mess of it." 
 
 Of that mess the girl had been informed. 
 At the time and since she had thought it not 
 unmerited. What she did not know and 
 what she never learned was the fact that the 
 mess was intentional. For there are some 
 things that some men do not talk about. 
 Even otherwise, there are times and seasons 
 when any compliment, however unique, falls 
 flat. 
 
236 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Afterward," Welden resumed, "it was 
 quite a bit before I was about." 
 
 "But when you were, did you not hear?" 
 
 "When I was, Sally told me that it was 
 you who were the co." 
 
 Maud lifted her hands. "She told you 
 that! She told you that I was the co-re 
 spondent!" 
 
 "In so many words." 
 
 "When did you learn that I was not?" 
 
 "The other day at Santa Barbara. It 
 came about rather oddly. We were on the 
 lawn, the wind was blowing, it disarranged 
 her hair. Her hair, if you will notice. She 
 wanted a barrette. There was no one within 
 call. She asked me to get it. It was in some 
 case, in some bag. She told me where and 
 where the keys were. She was very explicit 
 about it all. But I misunderstood. I opened 
 the wrong bag or the wrong box. In it I 
 found a letter addressed to me. I know it 
 by heart. July the Fourth, Villa Portu- 
 
PERSPECTIVES 237 
 
 gaise. Dearest: They have just wired me 
 from Frascati s that my father has been 
 injured. I am going over on the noon 
 boat. Join me there to-morrow. Mille 
 baisers, M. " 
 
 "She had concealed it!" 
 
 "Evidently." 
 
 "What did you do?" 
 
 Welden made a gesture. At the time 
 when he found the letter his mind had shot 
 backward. Facts and incidents trivial in 
 themselves and long since forgotten, mount 
 ed from those cellars of memory where what 
 ever we do or say or see is noted, registered, 
 catalogued and preserved. In a sort of ret 
 rograde vision the madness of a night re 
 turned. He beheld the silent villa and Sally, 
 her hand on his arm, saying: "Don t." He 
 recalled the singularity of her attitude; the 
 avid movement with which, when in the hall 
 below, she had taken and concealed the note ; 
 her subsequent eagerness to have him fight; 
 
238 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 her stupid insistence that he should tell no 
 one why ; her speeches and answers at Chan- 
 tilly: and suddenly a curtain rose. He saw, 
 if not the truth, at least the lie. 
 
 "What did you do?" Maud repeated. 
 
 "I went to her and asked whom Malakoff 
 had been entertaining that evening. It was 
 a little before I could get her to admit that 
 it was not you. Finally she acknowledged 
 that it was Mme. Oppensheim." 
 
 Again Maud lifted her hands. "It is in 
 credible!" 
 
 "Yes, particularly as from the start she 
 quite played on my mistake, at first, I sup 
 pose, in order to have me kill Malakoff and 
 later on, perhaps, because she felt compro 
 mised by the duel." 
 
 Maud considered these premises and then 
 supplied the deduction. 
 
 "That is why she asked you to marry her." 
 
 "I did not say that." 
 
 "No, men never do say such things but 
 
PERSPECTIVES 239 
 
 sometimes women infer them. How long 
 afterward did she die?" 
 
 "The same night, or rather the next morn 
 ing." 
 
 Maud considered that also, but more 
 longly. 
 
 "Don t you see," she said at last, "were 
 these things known, you would be suspected, 
 arrested perhaps?" 
 
 "Naturally. If ever a man had a motive 
 I had one. On the night when I went to the 
 room which you had occupied and saw what 
 I took to be you, Sally was at my elbow. She 
 had come to surprise Malakoff , and finding 
 me there and divining my error, took advan 
 tage of us both. I am sorry now for Mala 
 koff. I intended to kill him. He knew it, 
 knew the reason, knew that it was all a mis 
 take. But, bounder that he is, he could not 
 like an ordinary cad come to me with an ex 
 planation." 
 
 "No," said Maud. "Men never explain 
 
240 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 and women always do. None the less 
 
 "None the less," Welden ran on, "though 
 I can be sorry for him, I cannot be for Sally. 
 What happened to her was the judgment of 
 God." 
 
 That verdict Maud examined and at once 
 indorsed. 
 
 "Yes, for with a word she could have set 
 you straight." 
 
 Welden nodded. "It has been a tragedy 
 of errors. Yet, of course, if the police at 
 Santa Barbara had so much as an inkling 
 of it, I would be in jail there now. They 
 suspect me as it is, I think." 
 
 "But I read that you offered a reward." 
 
 "Yes, and it was then I felt that I was 
 suspected." 
 
 Maud looked that over also, but without 
 seeming to get the point of it. 
 
 "Surely they could not fancy that you 
 would offer a reward for your own convic 
 tion?" 
 
PERSPECTIVES 
 
 "No, but they could readily fancy that I 
 offered it to divert suspicion, for that is pre 
 cisely what a bungler would have done." 
 Welden paused. Presently he added: 
 "I did not realise that until afterward." 
 At this, Maud, who had remained at the 
 table, crossed the room and seated herself 
 on the sofa. Welden took a seat beside her. 
 "What do you propose to do now?" She 
 asked. 
 
 "Beg you to marry me." 
 The girl shook her head. "You need not. 
 I have no intention of it." 
 
 "For the same reason as before?" 
 "Partly. But for others also." 
 It was now Welden s turn to consider 
 things. While he was at it, she helped him. 
 "It is not that I cannot forgive you," she 
 explained. "But I have so long regarded 
 you as unforgivable that I cannot imme 
 diately forget. Besides, that you should 
 have suspected me is one thing, but that you 
 
242 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 should have consoled yourself is quite an 
 other." 
 
 "Consoled!" retorted Welden. "The word 
 does not fit. I had no relations with Sally." 
 
 Maud turned and looked at him. She had 
 never known him to lie, but she was not cred 
 ulous and Sally, whatever her demonism, 
 had been a very pretty woman. 
 
 "That s as may be," she answered. "The 
 point is you hurt me and meant to. I think 
 I could not have done that to you." 
 
 For a second she hesitated, her hands ly 
 ing interclasped in her lap. She opened 
 them and slowly added: 
 
 "But I am quite sure I could have done 
 a little harm to her." 
 
 "The little harm has been done," Welden 
 remarked. 
 
 But that Maud could not have found her 
 self quite able to concede. 
 
 "By another," she answered, "and incom 
 pletely." 
 
PERSPECTIVES 243 
 
 In what manner the harm could have been 
 completer she did not say, nor did Welden 
 ask, but he marvelled at the girl, who, in 
 spite of the character of their previous inti 
 macy, now, for the first time, revealed to 
 him her naked soul. 
 
 She stood up, went to the piano and with 
 one hand struck the keys into notes violent 
 and discordant. 
 
 Then, as she turned, displaying the oval 
 of her perfect face, and stood there, elabor 
 ately gowned, her head erect, she might per 
 haps, to any other, have presented but a 
 genre picture of a society girl, ultra smart. 
 To Welden she was something else, some 
 thing higher or it may be, lower; a being in 
 tensely human, vibrant with elemental pas 
 sion. 
 
 "She was made for me," he told himself, 
 and crossing the room, he looked her in the 
 eyes. 
 
 But however vibrant the girl may have 
 
244 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 been, however primitive also, she was not in 
 a mood for caresses. Dumbly against him 
 she felt the revolt which women have for the 
 man who comes to them from the arms of 
 another. Those arms were lifeless now and 
 such enfoldings as they had given perhaps 
 were scant, but some at least there had been, 
 and at the thought of them she recoiled in 
 stinctively. 
 
 "No," she said in answer to that look. 
 "Not now, perhaps never. I cannot tell. 
 Do not try to ask me." 
 
 "Good night," she added after a moment, 
 when Welden, who knew better than to urge 
 against her will, had taken up his hat and 
 coat. 
 
II 
 
 THE BENEDICTION 
 
 The fatigues compressed in a journey 
 across the continent are of a completeness 
 that satiates the sturdiest. On leaving Mad 
 ison avenue, Welden slept thirteen hours, 
 awoke, tubbed, dressed, drank some coffee, 
 read a telegram, also a newspaper and, other 
 details terminated, drove to the Grand Cen 
 tral where he arranged to repeat the trip. 
 
 The telegram, a night message from San 
 ta Barbara, marked Collect and signed 
 Wicks, was as follows: 
 
 Perkins Indicted on evidence personalty obtained. 
 Rings recovered, trial to-morrow. I claim rewards. 
 
 "The imbecile," Welden muttered as the 
 
 message fell from him. 
 
 But the purport of it he found repeated 
 in a morning paper, strung out there with 
 
246 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 sensational details, stories of full confession, 
 others of priceless jewels the property of 
 the murdered woman with whom Welden 
 had eloped and then been shot by the out 
 raged husband the usual farrago of fiction, 
 garnished in this instance with a picture of 
 White Peacocks which resembled the scene 
 of the crime about as closely as it did the 
 Plaza. 
 
 Beneath the ribbon of rubbish there was 
 none the less a fact. There was also a pos 
 sibility. There had been an indictment, con 
 viction might follow. 
 
 The rooms which Welden occupied gave 
 on Central Park. For a moment, from a 
 window, he stood looking at the rain of sun 
 shine, the leisurely motors, the gingerly step 
 ping horses, the parade of nurses out with 
 their charges for the midday air. Yet, though 
 he looked, he did not see, or rather it was not 
 the Park that he saw, but Santa Barbara 
 and the obligation to return there. 
 
THE BENEDICTION 247 
 
 The prospect was not agreeable. He had, 
 however, contemplated it before. Now, with 
 no thought of shirking, he .contemplated it 
 again. Then, the letter written, other de 
 tails terminated, he went down Madison 
 avenue for a word with Maud. 
 
 But the girl was not at home. William 
 assured him of that, assured him that this 
 time there was no mistake, that she was real 
 ly out, gone but a little before in her 
 brougham. 
 
 Welden took from a pocket the letter 
 which he had written. 
 
 "Here is a note for Miss Barhyte. Give 
 it to her yourself and say that it is not to be 
 opened until she hears from me. I leave 
 town to-day and I will wire shortly, but the 
 letter is not to be opened until then. Do you 
 understand? You do? You are sure you 
 do? The letter is not to be opened until I 
 wire. Very good. Here is something for 
 you." 
 
248 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 "Thank you, Mr. Welden. Thank you." 
 
 The man bowed Welden out, after which 
 he put the letter on the hall table where, later 
 that afternoon, Maud letting herself in with 
 a latch-key as was her custom, found and 
 read it. 
 
 Welden then was on his way to Chicago. 
 The press there supplied him with fresh 
 news from Santa Barbara, at Omaha there 
 was more. But thereon, over the plains and 
 through the hamlets which in a sort of hor 
 rible coquetry vie in hideousness with each 
 other, there was a silence that continued 
 until Ogden was reached. 
 
 Ogden too has its coquetries. But the 
 news of the day may be had there. There 
 is also a stop. 
 
 The stop is brief, yet it sufficed for Wel 
 den. He wired to Maud, got his trunks from 
 the baggage car, his bags from the Pullman 
 and boarded a returning train. 
 
 In a Salt Lake sheet he had read that, the 
 
THE BENEDICTION 249 
 
 prosecution collapsing, Perkins had been re 
 leased. It was then that he wired. The wire 
 was a request that his letter should not be 
 opened. Four days later he was in New 
 York. 
 
 On the evening of that fourth day, a bit 
 fatigued, the motion of the train actively 
 continuing in his head, but in a white tie, a 
 white waistcoat between which two small 
 black studs served to indicate his recent 
 mourning he was again in Madison ave 
 nue, this time in the parlour, as the local 
 drawing-room is sometimes called and on 
 this occasion very properly, for a parlour or 
 parloir is a talking place and Welden found 
 himself called upon to say more than he had 
 expected, and on a subject at that concerning 
 which he had not intended to talk at all. 
 
 Maud was not present when he entered 
 and he looked at the faded frescoes with a 
 yawn. In a moment however, from the din 
 ing-room beyond, the girl appeared. 
 
250 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 Her neck and arms were bare. Her gown 
 was white, striated with violet. As she en 
 tered she stooped to arrange or to release a 
 fold. The attitude, but momentarily main 
 tained, was so graceful that Welden forgot 
 his fatigue. Then, as she straightened and 
 approached, one hand just upholding a hem, 
 the picture she presented indemnified him 
 for the little horrors of the trip. 
 
 The week previous he saw that she had 
 altered. Now he realised that she had 
 changed again. It was as though when 
 bending at the door, her whole manner had 
 unbent. 
 
 She took his hand. "Dearest, another 
 would say that what you went from here to 
 do was noble. I do not. It was You." 
 
 Passably perplexed, Welden stared. In 
 the stare the perplexity was reflected. 
 
 The girl smiled. Her hand still in his, 
 she led him to the S in upholstery, in one of 
 the curves of which she seated herself while 
 
THE BENEDICTION 251 
 
 he, guided by her, seated himself in the 
 other. 
 
 "Dearest, will you promise me some 
 thing?" 
 
 Welden nodded. 
 
 "Will you promise not to he annoyed?" 
 
 Welden nodded again. 
 
 "I must tell you, then, that I have read 
 your letter." 
 
 Vexation lifted Welden visibly like a 
 lash. He dropped the hand he held, sprang 
 from the seat and went to the window. 
 On reaching it he turned. Maud was look 
 ing at him. 
 
 "Your promise!" 
 
 Welden ran his long, thin fingers through 
 his bright thick hair. 
 
 "Your promise!" 
 
 "But, Maud, I am not annoyed. Annoy 
 ance is not the term. If anything, I am 
 alarmed." 
 
 At that the girl also left her seat. Ad- 
 
252 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 vancing to where he stood she said in his 
 face: "It is the first time then in all your 
 life." 
 
 Welden, moving uneasily, turned away. 
 
 "Dearest, can you not trust me? Even if 
 I had not read the letter, sooner or later I 
 would have known." 
 
 With the goaded action of a bull before 
 the matador, Welden tossed his head. 
 
 "No, never, unless " He stopped, 
 looked at her, weighed her. "Unless matters 
 had gone the other way. It was only in 
 provision of the contingency that I wrote 
 you and when I did, I expressly instructed 
 William that you were not to read the letter 
 until you heard from me again." 
 
 "Yes, so he told me after I had read it. 
 I am not sorry, nor should you be. No 
 earthly thing could have brought us nearer. 
 Dearest, do you not see that between us now 
 it is for always?" 
 
 "You mean that?" 
 
THE BENEDICTION 253 
 
 "Mean it ! If you wish, I will go with you 
 to-night. The world will say that I am your 
 mistress, but I would rather be that than 
 empress to an emperor." 
 
 "Dona Sol!" Welden, with assumed light 
 ness, threw out. 
 
 "Dona Sol, yes, if you like, and Heloise 
 also, for both said it. With them, though, it 
 w r as heroics; with me it is the truth." 
 
 Welden took her hands in his. "Suppos 
 ing I put you to the test?" 
 
 "Give me only time to get a cloak, and 
 for William to call a cab." 
 
 "I don t mean that. I mean a greater 
 test." 
 
 "Is there any?" 
 
 Welden nodded. "Will you marry me?" 
 
 Maud laughed in his face. "Do you call 
 that a test? Do you?" 
 
 Welden, a bit relieved, laughed also. 
 
 "Well, you see," he said, "heretofore it 
 has rather seemed one. I give you my word 
 
DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 I had no idea but that you would refuse me." 
 
 Maud turned, surveying the room. Then, 
 assured that they were quite alone, she dis 
 engaged her hands, put them on his shoul 
 ders and raising herself, whispered: 
 
 "What girl would refuse a man who loved 
 her enough to kill another woman for her? 
 Dearest, I adore you." 
 
 Welden drew her to him. Presently, as 
 he held her in his arms, he said: "I hope 
 you destroyed that agreeable information?" 
 
 With a smile the girl freed herself. 
 
 "Completely," she answered. 
 
 Then taking him again by the hand she 
 led him back to where they had been seated. 
 
 There, after a moment, she added: "Dear 
 est, tell me about it. Did Sally know before 
 hand?" 
 
 "Now, Maud," he protested, "don t be 
 morbid." 
 
 But naively this girl in whom there was 
 so little naivete persisted. 
 
THE BENEDICTION 255 
 
 "Dearest, tell me this; was it because of 
 the letter you killed her?" 
 
 "I killed her for what she killed in me, 
 for her assassination of my belief in you. 
 That was more to me than life, and for it I 
 took hers." 
 
 Maud thought it over. But still the epi 
 sode of the letter rankled. 
 
 "What did she do when she found you 
 had my note?" 
 
 "What did she do?" Welden repeated, 
 "Personally she did nothing. But the most 
 curious of all physical phenomena manifest 
 ed itself in her. The red phantom of the 
 human conscience appeared in her face. 
 She flushed with a flame that came to her 
 from hell." 
 
 Maud contemplated the picture. It 
 seemed to her over coloured. With a ques 
 tion she toned it. 
 
 "Don t you suppose that she was merely 
 angry at herself for having kept the note? 
 
256 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 I cannot conceive what folly prompted her 
 to do so." 
 
 "A folly that is common enough," Wei- 
 den answered. "Almost all criminals leave 
 or preserve some evidence of their guilt. 
 There is an uncontrollable impulse which 
 compels them." 
 
 Maud smiled. "Thank fortune, that im 
 pulse did not actuate my criminal. Did it, 
 dearest?" 
 
 "Oh, but it did though. You read about 
 the jewels, the famous jewels, the rings 
 that cost ninety thousand and which an im 
 becile out there discovered, or thought he 
 discovered, in Perkins possession?" 
 
 "Yes, but it appeared that they were imi 
 tation and her own. The papers said she 
 had a receipt from a Paris manufacturer, 
 made out to her in her name." 
 
 "Precisely. Sally s stones cost more, but 
 nothing like what I represented. I know 
 it was not very nice of me to have exagger- 
 
THE BENEDICTION 257 
 
 ated their value as I did, but I had to 
 supply the police with a motive. Ca 
 n a pas fait un pli. They swallowed it 
 whole." 
 
 Maud laughed. "That was very clever of 
 you. Where were they at the time?" 
 
 "The rings? In my pocket." 
 
 Maud laughed again. "Where are they 
 now?" 
 
 "Where I put them, neatly done up, in the 
 coffin." 
 
 "You put them there! But why?" 
 
 "Partly from that uncontrollable impulse, 
 but chiefly in provision of just such a thing 
 as nearly happened, in order that if another 
 were convicted, I could prove that I was the 
 
 man." 
 
 "And if Perkins had been convicted you 
 would have done so?" 
 
 "Naturally. It would have been the 
 merest duty." 
 
 "Dearest, do you wonder that I love you? 
 
258 DAUGHTERS OF THE RICH 
 
 No. I was right from the first. There is 
 none but you. Tell me " 
 
 But whatever the girl s question may have 
 been, it was not asked or at least not then. 
 In the door through which she had come, the 
 general stood. 
 
 "Father!" she called in her clinging voice. 
 "We are engaged again and we are to be 
 married shortly." 
 
 Furiously the old gentleman turned on 
 her. 
 
 "In all my life I have never heard of such 
 indecency. Yes, damn me, indecency. You 
 were engaged to that man before and he 
 threw you over to marry another woman. 
 The day you leave this house for him, you 
 leave it forever. You are of age, you can 
 do as you like, but so can I, and, damn me, 
 I ll disown you." 
 
 Cursing and fuming, the general strode 
 on. 
 
 It was their benediction. They knew it, 
 
THE BENEDICTION 259 
 
 knew, too, that it was deserved. But the 
 ball was over, the nightmare as well. Life 
 larger, though more lawful, was about to be 
 gin. Slowly the girl s arms went about her 
 lover. At their touch, in sudden retrospect, 
 he saw again White Peacocks and the in 
 augural sky: the massacre on the horizon, 
 the trooping titans, the luminous arc, the 
 flight of the centaurs and the mirage of the 
 archipelagoes of love. 
 
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