The Amateur | Page 8

happiness in her presence, all
seemed to prove that to make her happy was his one wish, and that he
could do anything to make her unhappy appeared impossible.
They were married the morning she arrived at Saratoga; and the same
day departed for Niagara Falls and Quebec. The honeymoon lasted ten
days. They were ten days of complete happiness. No one, so the girl
declared, could have been more kind, more unselfishly considerate than
her husband. They returned to Saratoga and engaged a suite of rooms at
one of the big hotels. Ashton was not satisfied with the rooms shown
him, and leaving her upstairs returned to the office floor to ask for
others.
Since that moment his wife had never seen him nor heard from him.
On the day of her marriage young Mrs. Ashton had written to her father,
asking him to give her his good wishes and pardon. He refused both.
As she had feared, he did not consider that for a bank clerk a gambler
made a desirable son-in-law; and the letters he wrote his daughter were
so bitter that in reply she informed him he had forced her to choose
between her family and her husband, and that she chose her husband. In
consequence, when she found herself deserted she felt she could not
return to her people. She remained in Saratoga. There she moved into
cheap lodgings, and in order that the two thousand dollars Ashton had
left with her might be saved for his child, she had learned to type-write,
and after four months had been able to support herself. Within the last
month a girl friend, who had known both Ashton and herself before
they were married, had written her that her husband was living in
London. For the sake of her son she had at once determined to make an
effort to seek him out.

"The son, nonsense!" exclaimed the doctor, when Ford retold the story.
"She is not crossing the ocean because she is worried about the future
of her son. She seeks her own happiness. The woman is in love with
her husband."
Ford shook his head.
"I don't know!" he objected. "She's so extravagant in her praise of
Harry that it seems unreal. It sounds insincere. Then, again, when I
swear I will find him she shows a delight that you might describe as
savage, almost vindictive. As though, if I did find Harry, the first thing
she would do would be to stick a knife in him."
"Maybe," volunteered the doctor sadly, "she has heard there is a
woman in the case. Maybe she is the one she's thinking of sticking the
knife into?"
"Well," declared the reporter, "if she doesn't stop looking savage every
time I promise to find Harry I won't find Harry. Why should I act the
part of Fate, anyway? How do I know that Harry hasn't got a wife in
London and several in the States? How do we know he didn't leave his
country for his country's good? That's what it looks like to me. How
can we tell what confronted him the day he went down to the hotel desk
to change his rooms and, instead, got into his touring-car and beat the
speed limit to Canada. Whom did he meet in the hotel corridor? A
woman with a perfectly good marriage certificate, or a detective with a
perfectly good warrant? Or did Harry find out that his bride had a devil
of a temper of her own, and that for him marriage was a failure? The
widow is certainly a very charming young woman, but there may be
two sides to this."
"You are a cynic, sir," protested the doctor.
"That may be," growled the reporter, "but I am not a private detective
agency, or a matrimonial bureau, and before I hear myself saying,
'Bless you, my children!' both of these young people will have to show
me why they should not be kept asunder."
II
On the afternoon of their arrival in London Ford convoyed Mrs. Ashton
to an old-established private hotel in Craven Street.
"Here," he explained, "you will be within a few hundred yards of the
place in which your husband is said to spend his time. I will be living in
the same hotel. If I find him you will know it in ten minutes."

The widow gave a little gasp, whether of excitement or of happiness
Ford could not determine.
"Whatever happens," she begged. "will you let me hear from you
sometimes? You are the only person I know in London--and--it's so big
it frightens me. I don't want to be a burden," she went on eagerly, "but
if I can feel you are within call--"
"What you need," said Ford heartily, "is less of