Father and Daughter

Let it be written down as foreordained in the story of this unhappy house, that in like measure as the father recovered his self-possession, so, as swiftly, had the daughter journeyed to the confines of tragedy and learned there some of those deeper lessons which the world is ever ready to teach. Anna returned from Henley so greatly changed that her altered appearance rarely escaped remark. Defiant, reckless, almost hysterical, her unnatural gaiety could not cloak her anxiety nor all her artifice disguise it. If she had told the truth, it would have been to admit a position, not only of humiliation but of danger. A whim, by which she would have amused herself, had created a situation from which she could not escape. She loved Alban and had not won his love. The subtle antagonist against whom she played had turned her weapons adroitly and caught her in the deadly meshes of his fatal net. Not for an instant since she stood upon the lawn at Ascot and witnessed the defeat of her great horse Lodestar had she ceased to tell herself that the world pointed the finger at her and held up her name to scorn. "They say that I cheated them," she would tell herself and that estimate of the common judgment was entirely true.

It had been a great race upon a brilliant day of summer. Alban had accompanied her to the enclosure and feasted his eyes upon that rainbow scene, so amazing in its beauty, so bewildering in its glow of color that it stood, to his untrained imagination, for the whole glory of the world. Of the horses or their meaning he knew nothing at all. This picture of radiant women, laughing, feasting, flirting at the heart of a natural forest; the vast concourse of spectators--the thousand hues of color flashing in the sunshine, the stands, the music, the royal procession, the superbly caparisoned horses, the State carriages--what a spectacle it was, how far surpassing all that he had been led to expect of Money and its kingdom. Let Anna move excitedly amid the throng, laughing with this man, changing wit with another--he was content just to watch the people, to reflect upon their happy lives, it may be to ask himself what justification they had when the children were wanting bread and the great hosts of the destitute lay encamped beyond the pale. Such philosophy, to be sure, had but a short shrift on such a day. The intoxication of the scene quickly ran hot in his veins and he surrendered to it willingly. These were hours to live, precious every one of them--and who would not worship the gold which brought them, who would not turn to it as to the lodestar of desire?