Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise | Page 8

to conceal
Lorella's plight, had told him, pity and affection for his sweet
sister-in-law who had made her home with them for five years had
triumphed over his principles. He had himself arranged for Fanny to
hide Lorella in New York until she could safely return. But just as the
sisters were about to set out, Lorella, low in body and in mind, fell ill.
Then George--and Fanny, too--had striven with her to give them the
name of her betrayer, that he might be compelled to do her justice.
Lorella refused. "I told him," she said, "and he--I never want to see him
again." They pleaded the disgrace to them, but she replied that he
would not marry her even if she would marry him; and she held to her
refusal with the firmness for which the Lenoxes were famous. They
suspected Jimmie Galt, because he had been about the most attentive of
the young men until two or three months before, and because he had
abruptly departed for Europe to study architecture. Lorella denied that
it was he. "If you kill him," she said to Warham, "you kill an innocent

man." Warham was so exasperated by her obstinacy that he was at first
for taking her at her offer and letting her go away. But Fanny would not
hear of it, and he acquiesced. Now--"This child must be sent away off
somewhere, and never be heard of again," he said to himself. "If it'd
been a boy, perhaps it might have got along. But a girl----
"There's nothing can be done to make things right for a girl that's got no
father and no name."
The subject did not come up between him and his wife until about a
week after Lorella's funeral. But he was thinking of nothing else. At his
big grocery store--wholesale and retail--he sat morosely in his office,
brooding over the disgrace and the danger of deeper disgrace--for he
saw what a hold the baby already had upon his wife. He was ashamed
to appear in the streets; he knew what was going on behind the
sympathetic faces, heard the whisperings as if they had been
trumpetings. And he was as much afraid of his own soft heart as of his
wife's. But for the sake of his daughter he must be firm and just.
One morning, as he was leaving the house after breakfast, he turned
back and said abruptly: "Fan, don't you think you'd better send the baby
away and get it over with?"
"No," said his wife unhesitatingly--and he knew his worst suspicion
was correct. "I've made up my mind to keep her."
"It isn't fair to Ruth."
"Send it away--where?"
"Anywhere. Get it adopted in Chicago--Cincinnati--Louisville."
"Lorella's baby?"
"When she and Ruth grow up--what then?"
"People ain't so low as some think."
"`The sins of the parents are visited on the children unto----'"

"I don't care," interrupted Fanny. "I love her. I'm going to keep her.
Wait here a minute."
When she came back she had the baby in her arms. "Just look," she said
softly.
George frowned, tried not to look, but was soon drawn and held by the
sweet, fresh, blooming face, so smooth, so winning, so innocent.
"And think how she was sent back to life--from beyond the grave. It
must have been for some purpose."
Warham groaned, "Oh, Lord, I don't know what to do! But--it ain't fair
to our Ruth."
"I don't see it that way. . . . Kiss her, George."
Warham kissed one of the soft cheeks, swelling like a ripening apple.
The baby opened wide a pair of wonderful dark eyes, threw up its
chubby arms and laughed--such a laugh!. . . There was no more talk of
sending her away.
CHAPTER II
NOT quite seventeen years later, on a fine June morning, Ruth Warham
issued hastily from the house and started down the long tanbark walk
from the front veranda to the street gate. She was now nineteen--nearer
twenty--and a very pretty young woman, indeed. She had grown up one
of those small slender blondes, exquisite and doll-like, who cannot help
seeming fresh and sweet, whatever the truth about them, without or
within. This morning she had on a new summer dress of a blue that
matched her eyes and harmonized with her coloring. She was looking
her best, and she had the satisfying, confidence-giving sense that it was
so. Like most of the unattached girls of small towns, she was always
dreaming of the handsome stranger who would fall in love--the thrilling,
love-story kind of love at first sight. The weather plays a conspicuous
part in the romancings of youth; she felt that this was precisely the kind
of day fate would be most likely to select for the meeting. Just before

dressing she