[Footnote A: See "Ancestors."] Ruyler made up his mind to attend this dinner at Gwynne's, and telephoned
his acceptance before he left Long's. Business or no business, he should
be his wife's bodyguard hereafter. There were blackmailers in society as
out of it, and it was possible that his ubiquity would frighten them off.
Whether to demand his wife's confidence or not he was undecided. Better
let events determine.

II

When he arrived at home he went directly to Helene's room, but paused
with his hand on the knob of the door. He heard his mother-in-law's voice
and she was the last person he wished to meet until he was in a position
to tell her to leave the country. He was turning away impatiently when
Madame Delano lifted her hard incisive tones.

"And you promised me!" she exclaimed passionately. "I trusted you, I
never believed--"

Price retreated hurriedly to his own room, and it was not until he
had taken a cold shower and was half dressed that he permitted
himself to think.

That wretch had known, then! It was she who had been blackmailing her
daughter. And the poor child had been afraid to confide in him, to ask
him for money. No wonder her eyes had flashed at the prospect of a
fortune of her own....

An even less welcome ray illuminated his mind at this point. His wife was
not unversed in the arts of dissimulation herself. True, she was French
and took naturally to diplomatic wiles; true, also, the instinct of
self-preservation in even younger members of a sex that man in his
centuries of power had made, superficially, the weaker, was rarely inert.