The Mischief Maker | Page 4

muttered, "if you dare--"
She swept past him and down the stairs into the street. She threw herself into the corner of the automobile. The chauffeur looked around.
"Where to, madame?" he inquired.
She hesitated for a moment. She had affairs of her own, but the thought of the child's eyes came up before her.
"Back to the hospital," she ordered. "Drive quickly."
They rushed from Paris once more into the country, with its spring perfumes, its soft breezes, its restful green, but fast though they drove another messenger had outstripped them. From the little chapel, as the car rolled up the avenue, came the slow tolling of a bell. Madame Christophor stood on the corner of the lawn alone. The invalid chair was empty. The blinds of the villa were being slowly lowered. She turned around and looked toward the city. It seemed to her that she could see into the rooms of the man whom she had left a few minutes ago. A lark was singing over her head. She lifted her eyes and looked past him up to the blue sky. Her lips moved, but never a sound escaped her. Yet the man who sat in his rooms at that moment, yawning and wondering where to spend the evening, and which companion he should summon by telephone to amuse him, felt a sudden shiver in his veins.

CHAPTER II
AN INDISCREET LETTER
The library of the house in Grosvenor Square was spacious, handsome and ornate. Mr. Algernon H. Carraby, M.P., who sat dictating letters to a secretary in an attitude which his favorite photographer had rendered exceedingly familiar, at any rate among his constituents, was also, in his way, handsome and ornate. Mrs. Carraby, who had just entered the room, fulfilled in an even greater degree these same characteristics. It was acknowledged to be a very satisfactory household.
"I should like to speak to you for a moment, Algernon," his wife announced.
Mr. Carraby noticed for the first time that she was carrying a letter in her hand. He turned at once to his secretary.
"Haskwell," he said, "kindly return in ten minutes."
The young man quitted the room. Mrs. Carraby advanced a few steps further towards her husband. She was tall, beautifully dressed in the latest extreme of fashion. Her movements were quiet, her skin a little pale, and her eyebrows a little light. Nevertheless, she was quite a famous beauty. Men all admired her without any reservations. The best sort of women rather mistrusted her.
"Is that the letter, Mabel?" her husband asked, with an eagerness which he seemed to be making some effort to conceal.
She nodded slowly. He held out his hand, but she did not at once part with it.
"Algernon," she said quietly, "you know that I am not very scrupulous. We both of us want success--a certain sort of success--and we have both of us been content to pay the price. You have spent a good deal of money and you have succeeded very well indeed. Somehow or other, I feel to-day as though I were spending more than money."
He laughed a little uncomfortably.
"My dear Mabel!" he protested. "You are not going to back out, are you?"
"No," she replied, "I do not think that I shall back out. There is nothing in the whole world I want so much as to have you a Cabinet Minister. If there had been any other way--"
"But there is no other way," her husband interrupted. "So long as Julien Portel lives, I should never get my chance. He holds the post I want. Every one knows that he is clever. He has the ear of the Prime Minister and he hates me. My only chance is his retirement."
Mrs. Carraby looked at the letter.
"Well," she said, "I have played your game for you. I have gone even to the extent of being talked about with Julien Portel."
Her husband moved uneasily in his chair.
"That will all blow over directly," he declared. "Besides, if--if things go our way, we shan't see much more of Portel. Give me the letter."
Still she hesitated. It was curious that throughout the slow evolution of this scheme to break a man's life, for which she was mainly responsible, she had never hesitated until this moment. Always it had been fixed in her mind that Algernon was to be a Cabinet Minister; she was to be the wife of a Cabinet Minister. That there were any other things greater in life than the gratification of so reasonable an ambition had never seemed possible. Now she hesitated. She looked at her husband and she saw him with new eyes. He seemed suddenly a mean little person. She thought of the other man and there was a strange quiver in her heart--a very unexpected sensation indeed. There was a difference in the breed. It came home to her at that