The Reason Why

The Reason Why, by Elinor Glyn

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Title: The Reason Why
Author: Elinor Glyn
Release Date: May 26, 2004 [EBook #12450]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: "Not by a glance or a turn of the head did he let his bride
see how wildly her superlative attraction had kindled the fire in his
blood."]

THE REASON WHY
BY ELINOR GLYN
1911
Author of "His Hour," "Three Weeks," etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY EDMUND FREDERICK

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Not by a glance or a turn of his head did he let his bride see how
wildly her superlative attraction had kindled the fire in his blood"
"The whole expression of her face changed as he came and leaned upon
the piano"
"With his English self-control and horror of a scene, he followed his
wife to the door"
"'Zara!' he said distractedly ...'Can I not help you?'"

THE REASON WHY
CHAPTER I
People often wondered what nation the great financier, Francis
Markrute, originally sprang from. He was now a naturalized
Englishman and he looked English enough. He was slight and fair, and
had an immaculately groomed appearance generally--which even the
best of valets cannot always produce. He wore his clothes with that
quiet, unconscious air which is particularly English. He had no
perceptible accent--only a deliberate way of speaking. But
Markrute!--such a name might have come from anywhere. No one
knew anything about him, except that he was fabulously rich and had

descended upon London some ten years previously from Paris, or
Berlin, or Vienna, and had immediately become a power in the city,
and within a year or so, had grown to be omnipotent in certain circles.
He had a wonderfully appointed house in Park Lane, one of those
smaller ones just at the turn out of Grosvenor Street, and there he
entertained in a reserved fashion.
It had been remarked by people who had time to think--rare cases in
these days--that he had never made a disadvantageous friend, from his
very first arrival. If he had to use undesirables for business purposes he
used them only for that, in a crisp, hard way, and never went to their
houses. Every acquaintance even was selected with care for a definite
end. One of his favorite phrases was that "it is only the fool who coins
for himself limitations."
At this time, as he sat smoking a fine cigar in his library which looked
out on the park, he was perhaps forty-six years old or thereabouts, and
but for his eyes--wise as serpents'--he might have been ten years
younger.
Opposite to him facing the light a young man lounged in a great leather
chair. The visitors in Francis Markrute's library nearly always faced the
light, while he himself had his back to it.
There was no doubt about this visitor's nation! He was flamboyantly
English. If you had wished to send a prize specimen of the race to a
World's Fair you could not have selected anything finer. He was
perhaps more Norman than Saxon, for his hair was dark though his
eyes were blue, and the marks of breeding in the creature showed as
plainly as in a Derby winner. Francis Markrute always smoked his
cigars to the end, if he were at leisure and the weed happened to be a
good one, but Lord Tancred (Tristram Lorrimer Guiscard Guiscard,
24th Baron Tancred, of Wrayth in the County of Suffolk) flung his into
the grate after a few whiffs, and he laughed with a slightly whimsical
bitterness as he went on with the conversation.
"Yes, Francis, my friend, the game here is played out; I am thirty, and

there is nothing interesting left for me to do but emigrate to Canada, for
a while at least, and take up a ranch."
"Wrayth mortgaged heavily, I suppose?" said Mr. Markrute, quietly.
"Pretty well, and the Northern property, too. When my mother's
jointure is paid there is not a great deal left this year, it seems. I don't
mind much; I had a pretty fair time before these beastly Radicals made
things so difficult."
The financier nodded, and the young man went on: "My forbears got
rid of what they could; there was not much ready money to come into
and one had to live!"
Francis Markrute smoked for a minute thoughtfully.
"Naturally," he