“What shall you tell them?” repeated Nevius wearily. “There is naturally no use in telling them that I am incapable of deserting the helpless, for they would not understand. But tell them I say they are shysters, that the suit may be withdrawn, that I have nothing to gain at their hands, and they will understand the message thoroughly.”
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” the uncrushable Jones threw in. “And by the way, Carol, Dona Ferentes! What a tip-top name for the plaintiff!”
The lawyer nodded to his client. “I might have expected such an answer. But look at it in this light, wouldn’t it be better—”
“There can be no better,” Nevius interrupted. “And no worse. Miss Adulam is a young gentlewoman whom I have known all my life. Could I in any way sacrifice myself for her I would do so, but I can not sacrifice an innocent girl, nor, presupposing I could, would Miss Adulam permit me. Of Miss Adulam’s justification there is no manner of doubt. If Tooth and Tooth, in saying that they have all the evidence against her which they require, speak truthfully, they have been imposed upon, precisely as Mrs. Nevius has been. There can be no evidence. Not a charge can they substantiate. They may have perjury at command, no doubt they have, in which case we shall know how to act when we get it in court. As for Miss Vührer, I did not know her first name, nor how her last was written until I saw it in the complaint. I have seen her but four times in my life. I never knew that she existed until Mrs. Nevius brought her into this room. Were I to act as Tooth and Tooth suggest, what would you think of me? And what should I think of myself?”
The lawyer took a long breath before he spoke.
“They have got something, make up your mind to that, though whether it be perjury or not I can’t say. But they intimate they are in a position to prove a confession made by you to Mrs. Nevius previous to your departure.”
For a moment Nevius fumbled in a drawer of the table.
“Yes, I know,” he answered. “I read something of the kind in the papers. But just look at this. When I sailed Mrs. Nevius gave me a list of things which she wanted me to get for her in Paris. This morning I sent them to her. Here is an acknowledgment from her mother. It is hardly supposable, is it, if I left Mrs. Nevius in the manner which Tooth and Tooth describe, that she should ask me the morning I sailed, to purchase corsets, gloves and lingerie?”
“The morning you sailed?”
“Certainly.”
“And this list is in her handwriting?”
“It is.”
“Why, then,” exclaimed the lawyer, “they can trot out all the perjury they like. That bit of paper stumps them. The alleged offences were condoned.”
To this Nevius assented absently. “There must be no such plea though. The denial of the allegations is all that is required. They can never prove one.”
“No doubt, no doubt.” And the lawyer rose to go. “But I do not need to tell you that the greatest mistake a man can make is to underrate his adversary’s abilities.”
“Unless it be,” laughed Jones, “to overrate his own.”
XIV
Like a lethargic snake disturbed, winter dragged itself away. April came, and with it an eager glitter, the surprise of violets, skies of silk, wadded with films of white cotton, all the caresses and surrenders of spring.
Upper Fifth Avenue was well in the movement, alive with smart traps, Piccadilly accents, gems of bonnets, and grooms, the arms folded, impassible, correct. In all the world prettier women there are not than in that parade which circles through the Park, and descends again just in time to intercept the dusk. No, nor daintier either.
And pretty and dainty as the prettiest and daintiest, Mrs. Carol Nevius looked that spring. On her lips was the pink of the seashell, and in the depths of her sultry blue eyes the faintest petition for that sympathy which imaginary wrongs deserve. Ah, it was a pleasure to see her.
That pleasure was not enjoyed by her husband. But in those days his pleasures were few. Women, whom he had known all his life, forgot to remember him. Men, with whom he had lived on terms of offhand familiarity, had become punctiliously polite.
These things were nothing in comparison to others. The letter which he had sent rather blurred to his wife had been returned through Tooth and Tooth, with the intimation that he was persecuting her. The letter which he had sent to Miss Adulam had been answered by her mother; the girl was lying at the house of her uncle, Erastus Wilberforce, too ill to hold a pen. From Tredegar no answer came, a rumor merely that the boy was drinking himself to death.
Then, too, the divorce required in such haste that service by publication was necessary, languished, moribund and mute. And not at all because of the calendar. On motion it could have gone before a referee at once. But the
