For all his mental turmoil he realized that here alone was the only
possible menace to his life's happiness. His mother-in-law's past was a
bitter pill for a proud man to swallow, and there was even the
possibility of his wife's illegitimacy, but, after all, those were
matters belonging to the past, and the past quickly receded to limbo
these days.
Even an open scandal, if some one of the offal sheets of San Francisco
got hold of the story and published it, would be forgotten in time. But
this--if his wife had fallen in love with another man--and women had no
discrimination where love was concerned--(if a decent chap got a lovely
girl it was mainly by luck; the rotters got just as good)--then indeed he
was in the midst of disaster without end. The present was chaos and the
future a blank. He'd enlist in the first war and get himself shot....
Helene had a charming light coquetry, wholly French, and she exercised it
indiscriminately, much to the delight of the old beaux, for she loved to
please, to be admired; she had an innocent desire that all men should
think her quite beautiful and irresistible. Even her husband had never
seen her in an unbecoming deshabille; she coquetted with him
shamelessly, whenever she was not too gloriously serious and intent only
upon making him happy. Until lately-This was by no means her ordinary form.
He had come upon too many couples in remote corners of conservatories,
had been a not unaccomplished principal in his own day ... there was,
beyond question, some deep understanding between her and this man.
Suddenly Ruyler's gaze burned through to his wife's consciousness. She
moved her eyes to his, flushed to her hair, then for a moment looked
almost gray. But she recovered herself immediately and further showed her
remarkable powers of self-possession by turning back to her partner and
talking to him with animation instead of plunging into conversation with
the man on her right.
At the same moment Ruyler became subtly aware that Mrs. Thornton was
looking at his wife and Doremus, and as his eyes focused he saw her long,
thin, mobile mouth curl and her eyes fill with open disdain. The mist in
his brain fled as abruptly as an inland fog out in the bay before one of
the sudden winds of the Pacific. In any case, his mind hardly could have
remained in a state of confusion for long; but that his young wife was
being openly contemned by the cleverest as well as the most powerful
woman in San Francisco was enough to restore his equilibrium in a flash.
Whatever his wife's indiscretions, it was his business to protect her
until such time as he had proof of more than indiscretion. And in this
instance he should be his own detective.