The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1906-09-22
CHAPTER VII.

writing busily and fercely, as if to
absorb herself in what she was doing.
Her secretary, to whom she had die
tated replies to. some fifty letters less
private than those she was herself en-
gagged on, had just left her, but this
pile which stood by her on her table she
felt she had better answer herself.
The room where she sat was one Of
her own private suite, which she occu-
pied when, as now, she had come hur-
riedly to London, meaning only to stop
day or two, and do some necessary
business, and it was not worth while to
open the whole house. There was a
bedroom and bathroom belonging to it,
and another small sitting room, where
had been paying visits for a month
since she came down from Scotland,
and Thurso had as far as she knew been
doing the same, tho in other houses,
and this week-she had been here ten
days now-they were to have enter
tanned at their house in Norfolk. But
the party had to be put off. For on
her arrival suddenly at Thurso house,
she had found that her husband was al:
night alone, just with his valet and
couple Of 1naidservants, one to cook.
one to clean up. He had excused him
self from the houses where he was to
stay, and had come here to live in the
hell-paradise of opium. Lady Thurso
had telegraphed for Maud, who was
more use than anybody else with her
brother and the two had been here now
for ten days.
Since last June the habit had gained
on him with awful strides; for a few
months after that he had, she knew,
made frantic efforts to throw it off. He
had seen doctors, he had done all that
there lay in his power to do. But with
fearful rapidity sort of atrophy Of his
will had set in. He had soon no longer
wished or desired to be a free man
pletely been dominated by the drug, it
had left the calculating, scheming part
of his brain untouched, and in order to
obtain the drug, since the chemists with
whom he habitually dealt had lseen Or
dered not to give it him, he had gone
he had made what seemed to be the
very last effort Of his will, and in Lily's
presence had burned the prescription
which enabled him to obtain it. But
three days had not elapsed after that
before he himself forged another, and
Lord Thurso, calling suddenly at some
big pharmacy, in great pain, with pre-
scription bearing an eminent doctors
name, was naturally not refused the
dark blue bottle with its poison label.
Yet bnsily as Lady Thurso dealt
with her correspondence, striving, since
at the moment she could do nothing for
her husband, to occupy her mind any
how, rather than let it dwell on the
hideous reality of what was going on,
she was alert for the interruption she
expected. For this morning Thurso had
suddenly collapsed, and for an hour or
two they thought he was dying. But
the doctors had pulled him round out
of immediate danger, and Sir James
Sanderson, after an hours absence, had
come back again and was with him now.
He had promised to make his report to
Lady Thurso before he left the house.
Her pen went rapidly from top to bot
tom of the paper, and envelope after en-
j velope Joined the letters already writ
ten. Awful as the present was, yet, in
a sense, now that a crisis like this had
come, it was more bearable in thought
than those growing anxietles and tor
ments she had suffered in the past. For
with the growth Of the habit his moral al
perception, like his will, had seemed to
leave him. He had conceived wholly
baseless suspicious against his wife; ne
had uttered them; he had forbidden the
house to Count Villars. He had spied
on her, he had opened her letters, both
|. those which she wrote and those which
she received-he who few months ago
had exacted from her promise not to
open his. Then from being suspicious
Of others himself, suspicion .ripening
into certainty had arisen against him.
He made long absences, when he was
not at the house or at his club, and
gave pa1pably false accounts Of his days
when he returned. Finally, he had
brought to Thurso house, while his wife
was in it, a common woman off the
street. p
But the crisis which had occurred
this morning-the crisis that concerned
life and death-had mitigated the hor-
ror of these things, It had mitigated
also the acuteness Of another question:
Since June last she had known that
Villars loved her now, just as he had
always loved her, and tho, being. a
gentleman, to put the matter broadly,
\ he had not traded on her growing dis
gust at the man who was her husband,
it was impossible for her not to know
that her lover had moved closer. She
had no moral code Of defense. There
was nothing of that kind that prevent