The Breaking Point - Page 188/275

A man properly trained in right habits of thinking and of action could

not think wrong and go wrong, David argued. He even went further. He

said that love was a habit, and that love would bring Dick back to him.

That he could not forget them.

She believed that, of course, if he still lived. But hadn't Mr. Bassett,

who seemed so curiously mixed in the affair, been out again to Norada

without result? No, it was all over, and she felt that it would be a

comfort to know where he lay, and to bring him back to some well-loved

and tended grave.

Elizabeth came often to see them. She looked much the same as ever,

although she was very slender and her smile rather strained, and she

and David would have long talks together. She always felt rather like an

empty vessel when she went in, but David filled her with hope and sent

her away cheered and visibly brighter to her long waiting. She rather

avoided Lucy, for Lucy's fears lay in her face and were like a shadow

over her spirit. She came across her one day putting Dick's clothing

away in camphor, and the act took on an air of finality that almost

crushed her.

So far they had kept from her Dick's real identity, but certain things

they had told her. She knew that he had gone back, in some strange way,

to the years before he came to Haverly, and that he had temporarily

forgotten everything since. But they had told her too, and seemed to

believe themselves, that it was only temporary.

At first the thought had been more than she could bear. But she had to

live her life, and in such a way as to hide her fears. Perhaps it was

good for her, the necessity of putting up a bold front, to join the

conspiracy that was to hold Dick's place in the world against the hope

of his return. And she still went to the Sayre house, sure that there

at least there would be no curious glances, no too casual questions.

She could not be sure of that even at home, for Nina was constantly

conjecturing.

"I sometimes wonder-" Nina began one day, and stopped.

"Wonder what?"

"Oh, well, I suppose I might as well go on. Do you ever think that if

Dick had gone back, as they say he has, that there might be somebody

else?"

"Another girl, you mean?"

"Yes. Some one he knew before."

Nina was watching her. Sometimes she almost burst with the drama she

was suppressing. She had been a small girl when Judson Clark had

disappeared, but even at twelve she had known something of the story.

She wanted frantically to go about the village and say to them: "Do you

know who has been living here, whom you used to patronize? Judson Clark,

one of the richest men in the world!" She built day dreams on that

foundation. He would come back, for of course he would be found and

acquitted, and buy the Sayre place perhaps, or build a much larger one,

and they would all go to Europe in his yacht. But she knew now that the

woman Leslie had sent his flowers to had loomed large in Dick's past,

and she both hated and feared her. Not content with having given her,

Nina, some bad hours, she saw the woman now possibly blocking her

ambitions for Elizabeth.