The Bad Man | Page 4

home the people who could and
would be of use to him.
Every least act of his life was arranged, specifications written, plans
drawn, and blueprints made. One day he decided that he wished a
beautiful Italian villa on the north shore of Long Island. He pressed a
button, ordered his secretary to get in touch immediately with his
architect; and a half-hour later the latter was at his desk ready to talk of
the nebulous house. Within twenty-four hours he had arranged
everything--not a detail was forgotten.
That is how he did things. He set out to find a wife in the same
matter-of-fact manner. He met many women; but Lucia Fennell was the
only one who set his pulse beating a little faster. He felt it a shame that
he should be so weak. They were at a dinner-party at the country home
of a mutual friend.
It was her eyes that held him first. He had never seen quite such
eyes--blue, with a curious depth that spoke of many things--the eyes of
a girl who, had he been wiser, he would have known had been in love
before. This was the type of woman who never loved but once, and
then with all her strength beyond her own high dreams of what love
should be. But though Pell could appraise men, judge them swiftly and
surely, he was a fool where a girl was concerned. He had never spent

much time on them. Frankly, they bored him. He liked far better the
subtle game of finance. He had no finesse in a world of women, and he
would have been the easiest possible prey of an adventuress.
But Lucia was far from that. Of the best family, with old traditions, she
moved among the set she wished; but society, so called, did not appeal
to her. She preferred people with brains rather than the idle rich; and
she had traveled a great deal, and known the world in strange places.
She was very young when she met the one man of all men for her. Like
all women of great beauty she had known many men who were
infatuated with her. Those gifts and attentions which are the rightful
dower of every charming girl were hers in abundance; and she received
them as a queen might have done from subjects hardly worthy to sit
beside her. Then she met--one man.
It was during a trip she had made with her aunt through New England.
He was poor. To her, that made no difference. She would have gone
with him to the ends of the earth. The flame had touched her heart; she
was a victim, like many another; and when her lover, too proud to ask
her to share his poverty with her, stayed behind when she went back to
New York, and failed to write to her, she almost died of grief. But life
had to be faced. One word from her--she, too, was proud,--and there
might have been a different story to tell. But with the foolish
self-consciousness of lovers, each failed the other in the great moment
that would have sealed their destinies.
Lucia determined that this broken affair should not wreck her existence.
But she brooded long, in secret, and would go nowhere. Her aunt, with
whom she lived, could not rouse her for many months to a sense of the
vivid world around her. She would see no one.
Two years later Morgan Pell came into her life, at almost the first
dinner she had attended during a long period of time. His impulsiveness,
his assurance, his faith in himself and his power to win her, swept her
temporarily off her feet. At their second meeting he asked her to
become his wife. Why not? She would never love anyone; but she
could not go to the altar with him unless she told him the truth. She did
not love him. Was he willing to take her, knowing this?

He was. Love meant little to him--though he did not say so. He was just
wise enough to keep that secret within himself.
"I'll make you love me," he told her, with all the ardor he could put into
his voice. Few women can withstand that age-old phrase.
There followed a time of utter disillusion for her. The great house on
the Avenue proved to be but four bleak walls; and when the villa on
Long Island was built, she tried to be as enthusiastic as Morgan wanted
her to be. He lavished gifts upon her. He brought out gay house-parties
for weekends. Lucia did her best to keep her part of a bad bargain. She
made herself lovely, and Pell was proud of her physical charms. The
jewel was worth the finest settings, and