"But you have another--you told me so yourself."
Roland, who had been really perplexed, could not now conceal a smile. He remembered that he had indeed told Thorold he was married, but he had done so merely as an easy way of diverting the suspicions which that gentleman displayed.
Justine, still looking at him, caught the smile.
"What is there to say?" he answered. "It is false as an obituary."
But for that there was no time. Mr. Dunellen, trained in procedure, had already questioned Thorold, and found that save Mistrial's word he had nothing to grapple on.
"Leave the house, sir," he shouted, and pointed to the door.
"Then go." And raising his arms above his head as though to invoke the testimony of heaven, he bawled at her, "I disown you."
"There's Christian forbearance," muttered Mistrial; and he might have asserted as much, but Justine had lowered her veil.
And as she and her husband passed from the room the old man roared impotently "I disinherit you--you are no longer my child."
"Didn't you tell me he had been used to having his own way?" Roland asked, as he put Justine in the cab; and without waiting for an answer he told the driver to go to the Brunswick, and took a seat at her side.
In certain crises the beauty of an old adage asserts itself even to the stupidest. Roland had taken the bull by the horns and got tossed for his pains; yet even while he was in the air he kept assuring himself that he would land on his feet. The next morning the memory of the old man's anger affected him not at all. Passion, he knew, burns itself out, and its threats subside into ashes. The relentless parent was a spectacle with which the stage had made him so familiar that he needed no prompter's book to tell him that when the curtain fell it would be on a tableau of awaited forgiveness. And even though Mr. Dunellen and the traditional father might differ, yet on the subject of wills and bequests he understood that the legislature had in its wisdom prevented a testator from devising more than one-half his property to the detriment of kith and of kin. If things came to the worst Justine would get five million instead of ten; and five million, though not elastic enough, as Jones had said, to entertain with, still represented an income that sufficed for the necessaries of life. On that score his mind was at rest. Moreover, it was manifestly impossible for Justine's father to live forever: there was an odor of fresh earth about him which to his own keen nostrils long since had betokened the grave; and if meanwhile he chose to keep the purse-strings drawn, Justine had enough from her mother's estate to last till the strings were loosed.