The Washington herald., 1907-12-29
CHAPTER III.

When he reached his mothers house IN
Kensington, Rupert Haverford was met
with the information that she had left
town the preceding day.
The house was all shut up. and the
servant who opened the door to him wore
no apron or cap
He passed into the hall thoroughly
vexed
OF course by this time he ought TO
have been well prepared for any start
ling move on the part Of his mother who
never by any chance did those things
which were expected Of her. or. indeed,
anything that she had announced she
intended doing.
He put the parlor-maid through a
cross-eXaminatior
i came UP from the country on pur-
pose he said 10 her, naturally irritateG.
Il understood from a letter that was
sent on from my house that my mother
had had an accident. and that she was
anything but well,''
NO more she is. sir said the maid
DIR. Mortlock. he was quite angry when
he come here this morning and found
Mrs. Baynhurst gone: but there was a
letter come yesterday from MIR. Cuth-
bert. saying as he was III in Paris. and
the mistress she fused herself into a
fever and wouldn't rest satisfied, so she
left last night. She wasn't no more it
70 travel than this doormat, sir. You
see. there was all but a smash-up with
the brougham.'
Rupert Haverford was frowning
sharply.
who is with my mother?" ne asked.
shes took Stebbings, her maid that
is. sir. but not Miss Granger. Most
probable she'll have TO Join Mrs. Bayn-
hurst in a day or two"
The maid rambled on loquaciously, and
Rupert Haverford quickly gathered that
his mother must have had nasty shock.
as her carriage had apparently just es-
capped collision with a runaway cab. She
was not a nervous or a timid woman, far
from il: but Of late she had been in any
thing but good health. and this journey
TO Paris appeared to HaverfOrd not mere
ly an altogether needless fatigue, but a
very foolish undertaking on her part.
In all probability his half-brother's
serious Illness would signify nothing more
than an ordinary cold.
II was so typical of Cuthbert Bayn-
hurst to write in a sensational way about
himself: equally typical of their mother
TO take immediate alarm when any such
news reached her.
1t relieved Rupert Haverford TO be
angry with his half-brother now He
had made it a principle never TO be
angry with his mother. 1t was so use
less. She was a strange creature, was
Rupert's mother. In sense they were
nothing more than acquaintance. for she
had left his father when he had been
a baby of a few months.
Octavia Marling had married John
Haverford in a hurry, and had regretted
the haste almost Immediately.
Their life together had been unsupport-
able. 1t would, however, have been a
very unusual kind of man who would
have found life possible with a woman of
her peculiar temperament and mental at
tributes. even in the most easy-gOing cir
cumstances, and when such a woman was
boxed down into the narrow limits OF a
struggling existence passed in a dull.
smoke-g grimed, small provincial town, the
result was inevitable.
Ruperts father had adored his wife.
but he could not live with her.
She WAS a brilliant woman, a woman
with the brains, the viii, the tenacious
strength of a man, a woman who made
rules for herself. and quietly and firmly
rebelled against the position which tradi-
ton and nature had allotted to her sex.
When she had borne a child she had
felt hUmiliated; motherhood was a nat
uraI evil, she admitted so much. but
there were women created specially for
the purpose, and she was assuredly not
one of those women. She put the baby
away from her as she put other objec-
tionable things, and fell back on her
work with new and deeper intentions.
She had been engaged, at the time
when poor little Rupert came into the
world, on an historical work of some
magnitude, a work which entailed a con-
siderable amount Of research-indeed,
which demanded that she should move
about from one country TO another, IN
trammeled by ties Of any sort.
Perhaps the kindest letter she ever
wrote TO her husband was the one he re-
ceived after she had left him. She was
so unutterably glad TO be free; TO put the
factory town. with its troops of working
men and women Gathering on the rough