“I forgot to ask about Mrs. Vanderpool.
How is she, and where?”
Zora murmured some answer; but as she went to bed
in her little white room she sat wondering sadly.
Where was the poor spoiled woman? Who was putting
her to bed and smoothing the pillow? Who was caring
for her, and what was she doing? And Zora strained
her eyes Northward through the night.
At this moment, Mrs. Vanderpool, rising from a gala
dinner in the brilliant drawing-room of her Lake George
mansion, was reading the evening paper which her husband
had put into her hands. With startled eyes she
caught the impudent headlines:
VANDERPOOL DROPPED
Senate Refuses to Confirm
Todd Insurgents Muster Enough Votes
to Defeat
Confirmation of President’s
Nominee
Rumored Revenge for Machine’s Defeat of Child
Labor
Bill Amendment.
The paper trembled in her jewelled hands. She
glanced down the column.
“Todd asks: Who is Vanderpool, anyhow?
What did he ever do? He is known only as a selfish
millionaire who thinks more of horses than of men.”
Carelessly Mrs. Vanderpool threw the paper to the
floor and bit her lips as the angry blood dyed her
face.
“They shall confirm him,” she whispered,
“if I have to mortgage my immortal soul!”
And she rang up long distance on the telephone.
Thirty-one
“Was the child born dead?”
“Worse than dead!”
Somehow, somewhere, Mary Cresswell had heard these
words; long, long, ago, down there in the great pain-swept
shadows of utter agony, where Earth seemed slipping
its moorings; and now, today, she lay repeating them
mechanically, grasping vaguely at their meaning.
Long she had wrestled with them as they twisted and
turned and knotted themselves, and she worked and
toiled so hard as she lay there to make the thing
clear—to understand.
“Was the child born dead?”
“Worse than dead!”
Then faint and fainter whisperings: what could
be worse than death? She had tried to ask the
grey old doctor, but he soothed her like a child each
day and left her lying there. Today she was stronger,
and for the first time sitting up, looking listlessly
out across the world—a queer world.
Why had they not let her see the child—just
one look at its little dead face? That would
have been something. And again, as the doctor
cheerily turned to go, she sought to repeat the old
question. He looked at her sharply, then interrupted,
saying kindly:
“There, now; you’ve been dreaming.
You must rest quietly now.” And with a
nod he passed into the other room to talk with her
husband.
She was not satisfied. She had not been dreaming.
She would tell Harry to ask him—she did
not often see her husband, but she must ask him now
and she arose unsteadily and swayed noiselessly across
the floor. A moment she leaned against the door,
then opened it slightly. From the other side
the words came distinctly and clearly:
