The radiance of Miss Wolcott's face was still lingering in Lyon's mind
and diffusing a glow over his imagination when he crossed the few
steps that separated her house from Broughton's. Broughton opened the
door for him, as he had formed the habit of doing. The anguished and
despairing inquiry in his eyes pulled Lyon up sharply. He had come
from the morning to night, from the hope of youth to the sorrow of
age, from those whose story was to end happily to those who knew in
their own hearts the tragedy of life.
"You have nothing to tell me?" Broughton asked, though his tone showed
he expected nothing.
Lyon shook his head, "No. You have heard nothing?"
"Nothing. Nothing. Nothing."
From habit he led Lyon into the dining room, where they had always sat
to smoke before retiring, but the room showed no preparations for an
evening of good cheer. It was as blank and forlorn as Broughton's
face.
"_Where_ can she be?" he demanded, stopping in his restless walk to
face Lyon imperiously. "Ill as she was, with God knows what trouble on
her mind and conscience, where can she have gone? Did she feel that it
was impossible to live? Did she go to her death,--or to hide and wait
for _him?_"
"If you mean Lawrence, that's all nonsense," said Lyon, calmly. "I may
tell you now--there were reasons why I couldn't before--that Lawrence
is deeply in love with Miss Wolcott, who lives next door, and she
returns his sentiment. I am satisfied that their formal engagement
will be announced as soon as he is cleared of this accusation."
"What of that?" said Broughton dully. "He may be playing with a dozen
women for all I know."
"He isn't that sort."
"He is the sort that keeps up a secret correspondence with another
man's wife, and lures her from her home and her husband. That I know,
and knowing that I can't believe very much good of him in other ways.
_He_ knows where my wife is now."
"I don't believe it."
"Well, he will know before I do," said Broughton, sullenly. "She has
fled because she was connected with that affair in some way. It is
even possible that she discovered I was watching. And if she hasn't
destroyed herself, she has gone where she can wait for him."
Lyon felt helpless. The unreason of jealousy comes so near to insanity
that argument and common sense are helpless before it. It can only be
mastered by authority or by an appeal to the emotions, and Lyon did
not feel himself in position to offer either to a man of Woods
Broughton's age and personal force.
"Well, good night," he said lamely. "I'm going to bed."
"Go," said Broughton. "There is no reason why you should not sleep. I
shall not sleep until I know where she is. Good God, this very minute
she may be a helpless prisoner in some terrible den of infamy. She may
be suffering,--though she cannot suffer as I do."
Lyon got away from him and went up to the little back bedroom which
had come to seem so homelike in the short week he had been there.
Kittie's curtains were both down--of course. Her faithfulness to their
code even to this disastrous end struck him as pathetic.
"Dear little girl," he murmured, and blew a kiss across the night to
her. One can venture so much more in the night than in the
unsympathetic blaze of common day.
How much farther he might have gone on his excursion into sentiment
can only be guessed, for just then his eye was caught and his mind
diverted by something which, in a moment, took on more than a
momentary importance. It was nothing more portentous than a lighted
window in Miss Wolcott's home. The curious thing about it was that he
had never seen a light in that second-story window before. Every
evening when he had looked for Kittie's signal. Miss Wolcott's house
had presented a perfectly blank and unobservant side to his view. Now
some one was occupying a room which corresponded with his own room in
this neighboring house. While his eye lingered on the light in idle
speculation, he saw and distinctly recognized Miss Wolcott as she
passed between the window and the light in the room. The sight was not
in itself startling and yet he started and metaphorically rubbed his
eyes. _Miss Wolcott wore a hat_. Instinctively he looked at his watch.
It lacked a few minutes of eleven. Eleven o'clock in Waynscott was an
hour when respectable householders went to bed, unless they went on a
journey. Was it possible that Miss Wolcott was going out, alone and
unattended, at this hour? He had the greatest confidence in the
innocence of her intentions, whatever they were, but the story which
she had told had not given him the same prejudice in favor of her
discretion. What foolish plan might she have in her mind now? Why had
she said nothing of her intention when he left her an hour ago?
Distinctly worried, he reached for the overcoat and hat which he had
thrown down on a chair in his room, and then went back to the window.
If she was really bent on a midnight errand, he would escort her,
whether she liked it or not. He would quietly watch for the moment of
her departure, and then join her at her own front door.
But while he waited, another head crossed the lighted field of the
window,--not Miss Wolcott's. She was not going alone, then, for this
woman also wore a hat, and about her neck was the graceful line of an
upturned fur collar. He did not know Miss Wolcott's friends,--he knew,
indeed, very few women in Waynscott,--and yet something teasingly
familiar about the lift of the head, the turn of the neck, puzzled
him. Did he know her?
And then suddenly, the solution of it all flashed upon him. That
delicately turned head belonged to Mrs. Broughton. Dolt, idiot, that
he was, not to have reasoned it out before!
Mrs. Broughton, fleeing from Miss Elliott's by way of the secret panel
in the fence, had taken shelter at Miss Wolcott's. What more natural?
What more simple? And now, under cover of the night, she was preparing
to continue her flight. In a flash, without waiting for logical
processes, Lyon saw what he must do.
He hurled himself downstairs three steps at a time and out of the
front hall. As he had expected, a carriage was waiting before Miss
Wolcott's door. He went up to the driver, ostentatiously looking at
his watch.
"When does the train leave?" he asked.
"Eleven forty-five," the man answered.
"Oh, then there is time enough," he said easily, and ran back to the
house.
Broughton, who had been startled by Lyon's noisy run through the hall,
was awaiting him at the front door.
"What's up?" he asked.
Lyon realized that the moment had come for the autocratic dominance of
the sane mind. He put his hand impressively on Broughton's shoulder
and faced him sternly, imperiously.
"Mr. Broughton, if I could put you at this moment face to face with
your wife, what would be your attitude toward her?"
"What do you mean?" gasped Broughton, too bewildered by this new
manner to really grasp Lyon's words.
"Would you meet her with accusation, doubt, and coldness? Or will you
hide that unworthy side of your thought and let her see the love that
you really feel?"
Broughton's face darkened.
"If she can satisfy my doubts--"
"She must never know them! And this for your sake more than hers.
Think, man. How will you go through the years that lie before you if
you must spend them with the constant knowledge that you once failed
her, that she knows it, and that she can nevermore be proud of you or
sure of you? You will have made it necessary for her to forgive you.
Can you stand the humiliation of that knowledge?"
"She to forgive me?" stammered Broughton. "For what?"
"For doubting her. You should have believed in her against every
appearance. If you want to hold your head up before her, never let her
know what traitorous doubts you have harbored."
"How do you know that they are traitorous?" asked Broughton,
struggling for a grip on his past passions.
"Because--now listen and understand exactly what this means,--because
your wife, when she fled from Miss Elliott's, took refuge with Miss
Wolcott, who is Lawrence's fiancée. Can you believe for the thousandth
part of an instant that she would have gone to that girl if there was
anything between her and Lawrence? It is unthinkable. Now hold that
one fact firmly,--do not forget it for a moment,--and come with me to
your wife."
He crushed Broughton's hat upon the bewildered man's head and dragged
him out and across the dividing yards to Miss Wolcott's door. The
whole episode had only taken a few moments, but he breathed more
freely when he had actually got Broughton to the steps of the other
house before the women came out. There was no time to spare, however.
The doorknob turned softly. The door opened noiselessly and the two
women stood there, cloaked and veiled, ready to set forth. Instead,
Lyon drew Broughton inside, as though the door had been opened for the
purpose of admitting them.
"I must beg that you give me a few moments, Miss Wolcott," Lyon began.
But the need of making any explanation was taken from him. The lady
who at their first appearance had shrunk back of Miss Wolcott,
suddenly gave a little inarticulate cry and threw herself upon
Broughton's breast.
"Woods! Oh, Woods! Where did you come from?" she cried and burst into
tears.
Lyon held his breath in suspense, but it is not in masculine nature to
thrust away a beautiful sobbing woman. Broughton's arms lifted to
enclose her, and his voice murmured, not ungently: "There, there,
Grace! Control yourself!"
Lyon turned to Miss Wolcott, trying to leave the reunited husband and
wife in as much privacy as the situation admitted.
"What was your plan? Where were you going?" he asked, urgently.
She had thrown back her veil, and her face was pale, but resolute.
"We were trying to escape," she said.
"From whom?"
"That terrible detective. He had found Mrs. Broughton. He went to see
her yesterday and told her--" She stopped abruptly, and a shudder
shook her visibly.
"What did he tell her? In charity, let me know."
"He told her she would have to appear as a witness at the trial and
give testimony against me.
"Against you!" The room reeled before Lyon's eyes, but he pulled
himself together. "Let me dismiss your carriage and then you must tell
me what you mean. It was wild of you to try to run away. In the first
place, you would not be able to take any train without being stopped.
The police know of Mrs. Broughton's disappearance and are watching all
outgoing trains, of course. Besides,--but let us dispose of the
carriage, first."
He went to' the door and dismissed the coachman. As he came back, he
saw that Broughton had disengaged his wife's arms and was facing her
with that jealous sternness in his eyes that Lyon had dreaded.
"But to leave my home secretly, at the urging of--of--of _anyone_, was
not what I have a right to expect of my wife. I have reason to demand
an explanation."
The tears were still sparkling on Mrs. Broughton's lashes, but she
looked up at him with a steady glance.
"I am not your wife," she said quietly.