"And so you believed Barney, although ye know his weakness for jumping at conclusions? Ye must have believed him, for my name's not mentioned here," he said, looking at the paper.

"He told me Mr. Marix had intimated to him that you were behind the attack."

"Ah! and so it's Marix that's been misusing my name, is it?" he cried, his eyes narrowed. "I'll settle with him!" And then, "Ye love Ravenel, Katrine?"

"Yes," she answered: "there's just nothing else in life for me."

"And after all that's gone between him and me, you are asking _me to help him_?"

"Dermott," she said, gravely, sobbing between the words, "I came to you because I have always known the greatness, the selflessness of you, and I trust you."

They stood in silence, not looking at each other.

"I have no one else," she went on. "There is no one else in the world I trust as I do you."

He held himself more erect at the words, a great light in his face.

"You are the only one who has always, always been kind to me," she continued, "and I'd give all there is of me to come to you, heart whole, as your wife. But I can't do it, Dermott, I can't do it! I've tried; no one knows how I tried to forget this love in my heart. I studied to forget, worked to forget, _willed_ to forget, but"--and here she spoke the truth of life--"when great love has once been between a man and a woman, the man may forget, but the woman never. I've wealth and beauty, they say, and gift, and they're all just nothing to me except to help him. Before I'd been two days at the Van Rensselaer's it was just as it had been in Carolina. It was only fear that kept me from saying I'd marry him."

"He wants to marry you now? He has asked you?" Dermott spoke softly for her sake, keeping from his voice the scorn he felt for Ravenel.

"Yes," she returned. "And I know all you're thinking; but it makes no difference! When I think of him, ill, perhaps dying, his fortune gone, and nameless, maybe, as well, I'd give my soul to save him!" she cried, tear-eyed and pale, but glorious in self-abnegation.

She had risen and stood before him with eyes uplifted and unseeing. For a moment only she stood thus, before, the strain of the time proving too great for her to endure longer, she turned suddenly, and but for his supporting arm would have fallen. For a little while her dear, dark head lay against his breast, a moment never to be forgotten by him, though with stoical delicacy he refrained from thoughts which might have offended her could she have known them. He had grown very white before she recovered herself, but the great light still shone in his eyes as he placed a hand tenderly on her shoulder.

"Go home, little girl," he said. "Go home and be at peace. I give my word to help him. I give my word that all, so far as I can make it, will be well with him."

"Ah," she cried, "you are so good, so good!"

He made no answer whatever, standing gray-faced by the window, looking into the storm without as she drew her cloak about her.

"Good-bye," she said.

"I'll take you to the carriage," he answered, quietly. "The storm is still violent, I see."

Coming back to the office, he locked the door, drew the curtains, and sat beside the dying fire alone. In the outer room he could hear the click of poker dice, could even distinguish the voices of the players, but they seemed far off. Life itself seemed slipping from him. Suddenly he threw himself face downward on the rug in front of the fire and lay shivering, catching his breath every little while in dry sobs, impossible for any one to endure for long. Every little while he clutched the edge of the rug in his sinewy hand, not knowing in his agony what he did. The dreams and hopes of six years had been taken from him, and a great imagined future built on those dreams as well. The glory of his life had departed, and in his pa.s.sionate misery there seemed nothing ahead for him but gray skies and barren land and bitter waters.

All night and far into the morning he lay. About five, the storm outside having died away, the gray light began showing faintly at the window edges, and with the coming of the dawn the soul of the man gripped him and demanded an accounting. "Was this the way he helped?" he asked himself, accusingly.

By chairs and desk, for his strength was spent, he reached a small cabinet, and, finding a certain powder, took one, and, after a little while, another. Then he felt his pulse, timing it by the watch as he did so. Satisfied, he crossed the room to a safe, and with uncertain hands placed package after package of papers on the desk in careful order.

Last, from an inner compartment, he took one labelled "Ravenel," and stood looking at it with speculative eyes.

The case was so complete. Quantrelle and his brother, a cure of Dieppe, of known integrity, had sworn themselves as witnesses, through an open window, of Madame de Nemours' marriage. But what of it? Katrine could never marry a man with a disputed name! Still looking at the bundle, he struck a match. It flared up, sputtered, and went out, as though giving him time for second thought. Resolutely he lighted another, set the flame to the papers for a second time, and in an instant whatever trouble they contained for Frank Ravenel was nothing but smoke in the chimney.

"G.o.d forgive me!" he cried, as he sat down to write the following letter:

DEAR RAVENEL,--You will remember, I said in my last interview that the matter upon which we spoke could not be fully proven until I received further letters from France. They have come, and I hasten to write you that the marriage we spoke of was not a legal one, the witness, Quantrelle Le Rouge, being a great liar. It is thoroughly proven. Pray give yourself no more anxiety on the subject, and forgive me for doing what my duty prompted me to do. The thing is completely by with as far as I am concerned, and I have burned all of the papers relative to the matter. With best wishes for your complete restoration to health, I remain,

Sincerely yours, DERMOTT MCDERMOTT.

He folded the letter and sealed it, a curious smile upon his lips as he did so. Afterward he began looking over securities and making a list of them in steady, fine writing for the work in the day to come.

About eight he went to his hotel, bathed, dressed himself for the day, and neither of the facts that his heart was breaking, nor that he was about to shake the money market of New York, prevented him from regarding himself critically in the mirror to see if he showed suffering, nor from changing his neck-scarf to one of gallant red.

Underneath the bitterness of his heart lay a desire to square accounts with Marix. But it was part of his nature to excuse the weak, and on the way down to Wall Street the remembrance of the broker's timid-looking wife and the three little ones came to him. It was easy, after all, to forgive. Marix was too unintelligent to understand that it paid to be honest. "Perhaps," he reasoned, "G.o.d meant that even the fools and traitors should be helped, too."

Going into the stock-room, he looked over the quotations of the day before in an unimportant manner, waiting for Marix to come in.

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!" he cried, at sight of him, with a genial laugh, putting a hand on each of the little broker's shoulders and looking down at him with warning eyes. "I'm going on the floor myself to-day. It's been a long time since I've been there. Ravenel and I have come to an understanding," his long, sinewy hands gripped Marix for a minute so hard they made him wince, "and I'm going on to protect his interests."

The blue light of battle was in his eyes; his hat was far back on his head and his hands thrust deep in his pockets as he waited for the gong to call him to the fight. He saw that many were regarding him curiously, and his cheeks flushed with the Celtic instinct to do the thing well--dramatically well. He knew that, in the long night vigil, part of him had died forever, but with chin well up, like a knight of old, he went, at the sound of the great bell, to battle for the happiness of the woman he loved.

XXVII

SELF-SURRENDER

When Katrine returned to her apartment after her visit to Dermott, she found Nora, with an excited countenance, waiting for her at the door.

Finger on lip, she indicated a wish for Katrine to follow to her bedroom.

"Miss Katrine," she said, closing the door by backing against it, "there's one waiting for you. And you must think quick whether ye want to see her--with all that it may mean to you--with the rehearsal to-night. Though, poor lady, G.o.d knows her troubles! It's Mrs. Ravenel,"

she concluded.

"Alone?" Katrine asked.

"Yes, and with the tears streaming from her eyes and the look of death on her face. Mr. Frank's dyin', they say. But I want you to think--to think for yourself, Miss Katrine. Remember the night in Paris, when the world hung on your voice! Think of the afternoon when the greatest queen on earth kissed ye, after ye'd sung to her, with dukes and other creatures standin' round admirin'! Think that, if your voice fails ye to-night because of excitement and worry, it may be a check on your whole career! Think of the beautiful clothes laid out for ye to wear, and judge if it's worth while taking chances for a man who flung ye away like a worn-out glove!"

"Oh, Nora!" cried Katrine, reproachfully, "how can any one think of a voice in a time like this?"

As Katrine entered, Mrs. Ravenel turned from the fire by which she was standing and came toward her with outstretched hands.

Her eyes were red with weeping, and there was a hurried, despairing note in her voice as she spoke. "Katrine Dulany," she said, "I've come to you for help." Years of thought could not have given her better words, and the strong, young hands enfolded the cold ones of the suffering mother.

"If there is anything I can do for you, I will do it, oh, so gladly!"

Katrine answered.

"Frank is very"--Mrs. Ravenel hesitated, as though lacking courage to speak her fears--"perhaps dangerously ill. For nearly two months the trouble has been coming on--ever since he was at the Van Rensselaers'.

When he came back to me in North Carolina he had changed. He seemed struggling to throw off some heavy burden. His old gayety was gone, and he was always going to Marlton to look for records or asking me for more of his father's papers. At times he seemed half distracted, and would sit looking at me with brooding eyes with pity in them. But when he came back from Europe, just two weeks ago to-day"--the poor lady's voice was choked with sobs, and Katrine put a supporting arm around her with beautiful tenderness as she waited for her to continue--"he looked so ill I cried out at first sight of him. And he does not care to live! I can't make it out. It's not the money trouble. Money could never worry Frank. He cares too little for it! Last week," she went on, her voice losing itself in sobs, "Anne Lennox wrote me of your being at the Van Rensselaers', and of its being said there that Frank had asked you to marry him and that you had refused. Then I remembered that he told me, three years ago, of loving some one very greatly. Last night he became delirious, and in the fever he called your name over and over again, crying always, 'Oh, Katrine, forgive!' And that's what I've come to ask you to do--to forgive--to forgive him and me for all the wrong I taught him, for the weak and foolish way I brought him up--to forgive and come to him."

"There is nothing not forgiven," Katrine said. "I would give my life to save him," and the two clung to each other, weeping, before setting out, wifehood and motherhood, to battle with death.

Well hidden by the curtains, Nora watched Katrine enter the carriage after Mrs. Ravenel, realizing, with more anger than she had ever felt, all that the going meant. She had hoped that after a few years of the singing Katrine's heart would turn to Dermott, and as she saw her hopes fade away she shook her head knowingly, with even a touch of vindictive satisfaction.

"There are two kinds of men," she reflected, her eyes on the departing carriage: "the man who wants a woman to put her head on his shoulder, and the man who wants to put his head on a woman's shoulder. And when a girl's fool enough to like the last kind best, she generally pays."