The Breaking Point - Page 202/275

"I see." He fell into profound thought, while she sat in her chair a

trifle annoyed with him. He was wondering how all this would affect him

and his prospects, and through them his right to marry. He had walked

into a good thing, and into a very considerable content.

"I see," he repeated, and got up. "I'll tell Miller, and we'll get to

work. We are all very grateful to you, Mrs. Sayre--"

As a result of that visit Harrison Miller and Bassett went that night to

Chicago. They left it to Doctor Reynolds' medical judgment whether David

should be told or not, and Reynolds himself did not know. In the end he

passed the shuttle the next evening to Clare Rossiter.

"Something's troubling you," she said. "You're not a bit like yourself,

old dear."

He looked at her. To him she was all that was fine and good and sane of

judgment.

"I've got something to settle," he said. "I was wondering while you were

singing, dear, whether you could help me out."

"When I sing you're supposed to listen. Well? What is it?" She perched

herself on the arm of his chair, and ran her fingers over his hair.

She was very fond of him, and she meant to be a good wife. If she

ever thought of Dick Livingstone now it was in connection with her own

reckless confession to Elizabeth. She had hated Elizabeth ever since.

"I'll take a hypothetical case. If you guess, you needn't say. Of course

it's a great secret."

She listened, nodding now and then. He used no names, and he said

nothing of any crime.

"The point is this," he finished. "Is it better to believe the man is

dead, or to know that he is alive, but has cut himself off?"

"There's no mistake about the recognition?"

"Somebody from the village saw him in Chicago within day or two, and

talked to him."

She had the whole picture in a moment. She knew that Mrs. Sayre had been

in Chicago, that she had seen Dick there and talked to him. She turned

the matter over in her mind, shrewdly calculating, planning her small

revenge on Elizabeth even as she talked.

"I'd wait," she advised him. "He may come back with them, and in that

case David will know soon enough. Or he may refuse to, and that would

kill him. He'd rather think him dead than that."

She slept quietly that night, and spent rather more time than usual in

dressing that morning. Then she took her way to the Wheeler house. She

saw in what she was doing no particularly culpable thing. She had no

great revenge in mind; all that she intended was an evening of the score

between them. "He preferred you to me, when you knew I cared. But he has

deserted you." And perhaps, too, a small present jealousy, for she was

to live in the old brick Livingstone house, or in one like it, while all

the village expected ultimately to see Elizabeth installed in the house

on the hill.