Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ In spite of his own feeling that he would have to go to Norada quickly, before David became impatient over his exile, Dick took a few hours to find the answer to that question. But when he found it he could not tell them. The girl had been a dweller in the shady byways of life, had played her small unmoral part and gone on, perhaps to some place where men were kinder and less urgent. Dick did not judge her. He saw her, as her kind had been through all time, storm centers of the social world, passively and unconsciously blighting, at once the hunters and the prey. ”

“ He ordered the car to turn and go back, and for the first and only time he was filled with bitter resentment against David. David had fooled him. He sat beside the driver, his face glowering and his eyes hot, and let his indignation burn in him like a flame.
Hours afterwards he had, of course, found excuses for David. Accepted them, rather, as a part of the mystery which wrapped him about. But they had no effect on the decision he made during that miserable ride back to Norada, when he determined to see the man Bassett and get the truth out of him if he had to choke it out. ”

“ When, much later, Dick was able calmly to review that day, he found his recollection of it confused by the events that followed, but one thing stood out as clearly as his later knowledge of the almost incredible fact that for one entire day and for the evening of another, he had openly appeared in Norada and had not been recognized. That fact was his discovery that the Livingstone ranch house had no place in his memory whatever. ”