"'Oh, Daddy! Billie's so twisted and queer--and he won't answer when I call him.'
"Poor Dalken had a sudden premonition of catastrophe and rushed into the nursery. He almost collapsed at what he saw there. A strange woman was about to take up the stiff little form and do for it what a loving mother should reverently insist upon doing.
"The father, with a broken heart, took his beloved boy and prepared him for his last resting-place. All through the three days elapsing after the night of Billie's death, Mrs. Dalken remained locked in her boudoir, her maid seeing that the smelling salts were handy whenever her lady called for them. Between the visits of condolence from her intimates, and the fittings of the deep mourning, the mother was kept too busy to meet her husband, or watch with the remains of her baby.
"But after the funeral (that also buried most of Dalken's joy in living) he insisted upon a serious talk with his butterfly wife. She promised everything, even to giving up her gambling games, if he would but refrain from the publicity of the cause of Billie's death and the subsequent separation. She used her sharpest weapon to gain her point--Elizabeth.
"So several more months went by, but the poor man was a mere money-machine in his own home. Even his little daughter began to believe that society was everything, and love or home-ties only a necessity that interfered with one's pet pleasures and freedom.
"Without consulting her husband, Mrs. Dalken planned to visit Europe with a party of friends. To keep her grasp on her money-supplier she took Elizabeth with her. A nurse looked after the girl. She remained abroad for more than a year, and when she returned she went directly to a fashionable hotel instead of seeing that her home was reopened in New York.
"She had ordered everything swathed and packed for the time she was abroad, and had left but two rooms livable for the owner and master of the magnificent dwelling.
"Dalken lived there in gloomy sorrow for a few months and finally his friends insisted upon his going to the Club where he could meet cheerful companions and stop brooding over his irreparable loss.
"Mrs. Dalken was in no hurry to reopen her home, and all that Winter she remained at the hotel, while her husband stopped at his club. She allowed him to call upon her two or three times a week, when others were present, and she not only accepted all the checks he offered her, but ran up fearful debts everywhere. He was permitted to take Elizabeth out at certain times, but Mrs. Dalken was clever enough to keep hold on the girl, as she knew it was her only hope of keeping her clutch on her provider.