The Argosy, Vol. 75, No. 4 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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724 he asked slowly, with a curious feeling that the foundations of his life had been removed suddenly and without his sus- pecting they were gone till he began to slide into an abyss. He caught at something that promised safety. “There’s this house—and the New- port place!”’ “'That’s why I married Mr. Bar- rington so soon,” his mother- said. “They were going to take them—to settle up things, you know. I told Mr. Barrington because I was quite wild; I didn’t know what else to do. He paid the debts and arranged every- thing. Nobody will know, Ted, that you—that you—” Mrs. Barrington paused. She could not put into words the announcement that her independent, high-headed son was poor and a pensioner on the bounty of her husband. Ted swallowed hard at something that rose in his throat. He stared around the luxurious room. All it con- tained was—Barrington’s. He looked at his mother. She was Barrington’s. His lip curled as he reflected that he, too, belonged to Barrington because he was dependent upon him. “Ted, you don’t blame me for marrying him? He wouldn't let me tell you because he was sure that you would make an objection to accepting anything from him. He said that after you knew him it would be easier—”’ “Well, it’ won't!” Ted exclaimed, striding the length of the room with his hands gripped hard behind him and his face set in tense white misery. “ But, Ted, he is so rich! He has never been married. And he knows that you are everything to me! I’m sure he will do as much for you as if you were his own son,” his mother said, following him and speaking with all her maternal love throbbing in her voice. ; Ted felt her suffering for him. He turned with quick response toward her. “Don’t worry about me, mother. ‘You've done the very best thing under the circumstances.” THE ARGOSY. “For us both, Ted?” she asked quickly. “For us both,” he agreed, forcing himself to say what she wanted to hear, and knowing that the expression of the despair and self-reproach which seethed in him would only make her unhappy. A maid warned Mrs. Barrington that it was time for her to dress. Ted pre- sented a smiling front, not so much to the catastrophe which threatened to overwhelm him as to his mother and for the sake of her happiness. But when she was out of the room he dropped into a chair as if a blow had felled him. He stared grimly at himself as his mind conjured him be- fore the bar of his own judgment. He was ruined; and, like a coward, he was quaking and trembling at his own plight. Already he hated Barrington simply because he was dependent on him. Against that dependence the real man in him rose and rebelled; but the self that had acquired a decorative educa- tion, that had fed on the fat of the land and reveled thoughtlessly in the luxuries he had not earned, cringed and sniveled at the loss of them all. And there was Bess. She had been reared with the silent but plainly un- derstood intention of making a bril- liant match so constantly before her that a poor man might just as well want the moon. . In consideration for her, too, Ted dared not hope to win her; it would be too cruel to subject a girl who had never known the need of exertion nor had learned any useful thing to com- bat the difficulties that a poor man’s wife must meet. He thought grimly of the idiotic way in which both of them were made vic- tims of money, for without it they were powerless. He knew Mrs. Hetherington’s inordinate ambition for her beautiful daughter. Bess was so supremely superior to any of the other girls in her loveliness and brilliant wit that Ted knew his (€) DOOKS AMUN <€on