The Inner Shrine | Page 8

could give you a more splendid home than any
European you were likely to marry, however exalted his rank. I was not
without fears that George was spending too much money; but we've
always had plenty for whatever we wanted to do; and so I let him go on
when I should have stopped him. It was my vanity. It wasn't his fault.
He inherited a large fortune; and if I had only brought him up wisely, it
would have been enough."
"And wasn't it enough?"
In spite of her growing dread, Diane brought out the question firmly.
Mrs. Eveleth sat one long minute motionless, with hands clasped, with
lips parted, and with suspended breath.
"No."
The monosyllable seemed to fill the room. It echoed and re-echoed in
Diane's ears like the boom of a cannon. While her outward vision took
in such details as the despair in Mrs. Eveleth's face, the folds of crape
on her gown, the Watteau picture on the panel of moss-green and gold
that formed the background, all the realities of life seemed to be

dissolving into chaos, as the glories of the sunset sink into a black and
formless mass. When Mrs. Eveleth spoke again, her voice sounded as
though it came from far away.
"I want to take all the blame upon myself. If it hadn't been for me,
George would never have gone to such extremes."
"Extremes?"
Diane spoke not so much from the desire to speak as from the necessity
of forcing her reeling intelligence back to the world of fact.
"I'm afraid there's no other word for it."
"Do you mean that there are debts?"
"A great many debts."
"Can't they be paid?"
"Most of them can be paid--perhaps all; but when that is done I'm
afraid there will be very little left."
"But surely we haven't lived so extravagantly as that. I know I've spent
a great deal of money--"
"It hasn't been altogether the style of living. When my poor boy saw
that he was going beyond his means he tried to recoup himself by
speculation. Do you know what that is?"
"I know it's something by which people lose money."
"He had no experience of anything of the kind, and his men of business
tell me he went into it wildly. He had that optimistic temperament
which always believes that the next thing will be a success, even
though the present one is a failure. Then, too, he fell into the hands of
unscrupulous men, who made him think that great fortunes were to be
made out of what they call wildcat schemes, when all the time they
were leading him to ruin."

Ruin! The word appealed to Diane's memory and imagination alike. It
came to her from her remotest childhood, when she could remember
hearing it applied to her grandfather, the old Comte de la Ferronaise.
After that she could recollect leaving the great château in which she
was born, and living with her parents, first in one European capital, and
then in another. Finally they settled for a few years in Ireland, her
mother's country, where both her parents died. During all this time, as
well as in the subsequent years in a convent at Auteuil, she was never
free from the sense of ruin hanging over her. Though she understood
well enough that her way of escape lay in making a rich marriage, it
was impressed upon her that the meagreness of her dot would make her
efforts in this direction difficult. When, within a few months of leaving
the convent, she was asked by George Eveleth to become his wife, it
seemed as if she had reached the end of her cares. She had the less
scruple in accepting what he had to give in that she honestly liked the
generous, easy-going man who lived but to gratify her whims. During
the four years of her married life she had spent money, not merely for
the love of spending, but from sheer joy in the sense that Poverty, the
arch-enemy, had been defeated; and lo! he was springing at her again.
"Ruin!" she echoed, when Mrs. Eveleth had let fall the word. "Do you
mean that we're--ruined?"
"It depends on how you look at it. You will always have your own
small fortune, on which you can live with economy."
"But you will have yours, too."
Mrs. Eveleth smiled faintly.
"No; I'm afraid that's gone. It was in George's hands, and I can see he
tried to increase it for me, by doing with it--as he did with his own. I'm
not blaming him. The worst of which he can be accused is a lack of
judgment."
"But there's this house!" Diane urged, "and all this furniture!--and these
pictures!"

She glanced up at the Watteau, the