Barker had seen that the attention of
the next table was directed to them, and that even Mrs. Horncastle had
glanced from time to time at Stacy. But she was not prepared for the
evident equal effect that Mrs. Horncastle had created upon Stacy. His
cold face warmed, his critical eye softened; he asked her name. Mrs.
Barker was voluble, prejudiced, and, it seemed, misinformed.
"I know it all," said Stacy, with didactic emphasis. "Her husband was as
bad as they make them. When her life had become intolerable WITH HIM, he
tried to make it shameful WITHOUT HIM by abandoning her. She could get a
divorce a dozen times over, but she won't."
"I suppose that's what makes her so very attractive to gentlemen," said
Mrs. Barker ironically.
"I have never seen her before," continued Stacy, with business
precision, "although I and two other men are guardians of her property,
and have saved it from the clutches of her husband. They told me she was
handsome--and so she is."
Pleased with the sudden human weakness of Stacy, Barker glanced at his
wife for sympathy. But she was looking studiously another way, and the
young husband's eyes, still full of his gratification, fell upon
Mrs. Horncastle's. She looked away with a bright color. Whereupon
the sanguine Barker--perfectly convinced that she returned Stacy's
admiration--was seized with one of his old boyish dreams of the future,
and saw Stacy happily united to her, and was only recalled to the dinner
before him by its end.
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