Robert W. Chambers

“ Yours, Jack—acting for your interest—which is hers, too—which must be hers. Where is your sense of honor? Where is your sense of justice? Has the glimpse of a woman's face in the park seared your eyes? Is it true that an indifferent man can be just, but a man in love is a partisan? ”

“ Without consulting your legal adviser you perpetrated a crime—for it is criminal to parody the highest safeguard to civilization—marriage. It was a crime; your wife is your accomplice—particeps criminis, my friend. Neither you nor she deserves mercy."
He turned away, buttoning his gloves.
"It's touched your temples with gray," he observed. "You have learned something at thirty, Jack, even if it's cost you what you think a mésalliance"
As he stepped to the door a maid appeared with a card on a salver. Edgerton glanced at it, then looked straight into Courtlandt's eyes. ”

“ They are too pretty for a man who smokes a pipe—all rococo, and furniture with beagle legs, you know."
"For whom were they intended?" she asked innocently.
He reddened. "I bought the house after our wedding," he hesitated; "then, afterwards, from your letters, I fancied that you might prefer to remain abroad. So I said nothing."
She bent her head. "I—I thought it fairer—to you," she said in a low voice. "I would have come had you asked me. I—how was I to know, Mr. Edgerton?" ”

“ For twenty years his one absorbing passion has been the education and fitting of his only child for a position in the world which he himself could never hope to attain. Wealth and education, linked with an agreeable personality, may go anywhere in this century. ”

“ What is gratitude?"
"It is not gratitude if it asks that question," returned Edgerton; "and I fear that after all it was not exactly gratitude. Gratitude gives; a debt of honor exacts. There is no profit in following this line further, is there, Billy?"
"No," assented Courtlandt, "unless it's going to help us disentangle the unfortunate affair." He unfolded another paper. "It's too dark to read," he observed, leaning forward into the fire-light. The red reflection of the coals played over his face and the black-edged notepaper he was scanning. And he read, slowly ”

“ Edgerton's son, yourself, and the chances of the child of Michael Innis. To this letter you replied (copy herewith) , repeating in a manly fashion your assurance of gratitude, holding yourself at the service of Mr. Innis. Now, sir, if your assurances meant more than mere civility, you have an opportunity to erase the deep obligations that your father assumed. Mr. Innis is a man broken in mind and body. ”

“ I assume all responsibility for your daughter's future. Utterly impossible for me to leave New York. If you believe marriage advisable, arrange for special dispensation and ceremony by proxy.
John Edgerton. ”

“ She laughed in her excitement and happiness, not weighing words and their meaning until their echo returned again to appall her—while her maid aided her to dress—and the echo of his answer, too, rang persistently in her ears: "Yes, to pardon, to dispose of, to command, always, as long as I have life to serve you."
And now she was ready, smiling nervously back at her own flushed reflection in the mirror—a young girl stirred to the soul by kindness, almost intoxicated at a glimpse of her own undreamed of beauty, surprised there in the depths of the mirror.
"At the foot of the stairs she ... ”