He
seems to know nobody--to have no friends, and, I suspect,
not much money. He is terribly depressed." Clara folded
the letter thoughtfully. "He asks me to tell his mother
that the baby has come."
"Where is his mother?"
"In Switzerland."
"Why is she not with him?" demanded Lucy angrily.
"Wandering about gathering edelweiss, while he is alone
and wretched!"
"He has his wife. You probably do not understand the
case fully," said Clara coldly. "I am going to wire to
his mother now." She turned away and Lucy stood
irresolute, her hand clutching the shaggy head of the
stone beast beside her.
"I can give him money. I'll go to him. He needs me!"
she said aloud. Then her whole body burned with shame.
She--Lucy Dunbar, good proper Lucy, whose conscience hurt
her if she laid her handkerchiefs away awry in her
drawer, nursing a criminal passion for a married man!
She went slowly back to the inn. "He has his wife," she
told herself. "I am nothing to him. I doubt if he would
know me if he met me on the street." She tried to go
back to her easy-going mannerly little thoughts, but
there was something strange and fierce behind them that
would not down.
Jean came presently to the salle. "I have had a letter
too," she said. "The girl who writes came from Pond
City. She was in the same atelier in Paris with
George. She says: `Your friends the Waldeaux have
come to grief by a short cut. They flung money about for
a few months as if they were backed by the Barings.
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