"I know it all," said Stacy, with didactic emphasis. "Her husband was as bad as they make them. When her life had become intolerable WITH HIM, he tried to make it shameful WITHOUT HIM by abandoning her. She could get a divorce a dozen times over, but she won't."
"I suppose that's what makes her so very attractive to gentlemen," said Mrs. Barker ironically.
"I have never seen her before," continued Stacy, with business precision, "although I and two other men are guardians of her property, and have saved it from the clutches of her husband. They told me she was handsome--and so she is."
Pleased with the sudden human weakness of Stacy, Barker glanced at his wife for sympathy. But she was looking studiously another way, and the young husband's eyes, still full of his gratification, fell upon Mrs. Horncastle's. She looked away with a bright color.
Whereupon the sanguine Barker--perfectly convinced that she returned Stacy's admiration--was seized with one of his old boyish dreams of the future, and saw Stacy happily united to her, and was only recalled to the dinner before him by its end. Then Stacy duly promenaded the great saloon with Mrs. Barker on his arm, visited the baby in her apartments, and took an easy leave. But he grasped Barker's hand before parting in quite his old fashion, and said, "Come to lunch with me at the bank any day, and we'll talk of Phil Demorest," and left Barker as happy as if the appointment were to confer the favor he had that morning refused. But Mrs. Barker, who had overheard, was more dubious.
"You don't suppose he asks you to talk with you about Demorest and his stupid secret, do you?" she said scornfully.
"Perhaps not only about that," said Barker, glad that she had not demanded the secret.
"Well," returned Mrs. Barker as she turned away, "he might just as well lunch here and talk about HER--and see her, too."
Meantime Stacy had dropped into his club, only a few squares distant. His appearance created the same interest that it had produced at the hotel, but with less reserve among his fellow members.
"Have you heard the news?" said a dozen voices. Stacy had not; he had been dining out.
"That infernal swindle of a Divide Railroad has passed the legislature."
Stacy instantly remembered Barker's absurd belief in it and his reasons. He smiled and said carelessly, "Are you quite sure it's a swindle?"
There was a dead silence at the coolness of the man who had been most outspoken against it.
"But," said a voice hesitatingly, "you know it goes nowhere and to no purpose."
"But that does not prevent it, now that it's a fact, from going anywhere and to some purpose," said Stacy, turning away. He passed into the reading-room quietly, but in an instant turned and quickly descended by another staircase into the hall, hurriedly put on his overcoat, and slipping out was a moment later re-entering the hotel. Here he hastily summoned Barker, who came down, flushed and excited. Laying his hand on Barker's arm in his old dominant way, he said:--
"Don't delay a single hour, but get a written agreement for that Ditch property."
Barker smiled. "But I have. Got it this afternoon."
"Then you know?" ejaculated Stacy in surprise.
"I only know," said Barker, coloring, "that you said I could back out of it if it wasn't signed, and that's what Kitty said, too.
And I thought it looked awfully mean for me to hold a man to that kind of a bargain. And so--you won't be mad, old fellow, will you?--I thought I'd put it beyond any question of my own good faith by having it in black and white." He stopped, laughing and blushing, but still earnest and sincere. "You don't think me a fool, do you?" he said pathetically.
Stacy smiled grimly. "I think, Barker boy, that if you go to the Branch you'll have no difficulty in paying for the Ditch property.
Good-night."
In a few moments he was back at the club again before any one knew he had even left the building. As he again re-entered the smoking- room he found the members still in eager discussion about the new railroad. One was saying, "If they could get an extension, and carry the road through Heavy Tree Hill to Boomville they'd be all right."
"I quite agree with you," said Stacy.