Miss Maitland, Private Secretary

Rising into the white wash of moonlight came Suzanne You’ve done one thing to me that you are going to regret His face was ludicrous in its enraged enmity Ferguson saw him in silhouette, a large, humped body with bent head

MISS MAITLAND PRIVATE SECRETARY

CHAPTER I—THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

Chapman Price was leaving Grasslands. Events had been rapidly advancing to that point for the last three months, slowly advancing for the last three years. Everybody who knew the Prices and the Janneys said it was inevitable, and people who didn’t know them but read about them in the "society papers" could give quite glibly the reasons why Mrs. Chapman Price was going to separate from her husband.

His friends said it was her fault; Suzanne Price was enough to drive any man away from her—selfish, exacting, bad tempered, a spoiled child of wealth. Chappie had been a first-rate fellow when he married her and she’d nagged and tormented him past bearing. Her friends had a different story; Chapman Price was no good, had neglected her, was an idler and a spendthrift. Hadn’t the Janneys set him up in business over and over and found it hopeless? What he had wanted was her money, and people had told her so; her mother had begged her to give him up, but she would have him and learned her lesson, poor girl! Those in the Janney circle said there would have been a divorce long before if it hadn’t been for the child. She had held them together, kept them in a sort of hostile, embattled partnership for years. And then, finally, that link broke and Chapman Price had to go.

There had been a last conclave in the library that morning, Mrs. Janney presiding. Then they separated, silent and gloomy—a household of eight years, even an uncongenial one, isn’t broken up without the sense of finality weighing on its members. Chapman had gone to his rooms and flung orders at his valet to pack up, and Suzanne had gone to hers, thrown herself on the sofa, and sniffed salts with her eyes shut. Mr. and Mrs. Janney repaired to the wide shaded balcony and there talked it over in low tones. They were immensely relieved that it was at last settled, though of course there would be the unpleasantness of a divorce and the attending gossip. Mr. Janney hated gossip, but his wife, who had risen from a Pittsburg suburb to her present proud eminence, was too battle-scarred a veteran to mind a little thing like that.

As they talked, their eyes wandered over a delightful prospect. First a strip of velvet lawn, then a terrace and balustraded walk, and beyond that the enameled brilliance of long gardens where flowers grew in masses, thick borders, and delicate spatterings, bright against the green. Back of the gardens were more lawns, shaven close and dappled with tree shadows, then woods—Mrs. Janney’s far acres—on this fine morning all shimmering and astir with a light, salt-tinged breeze. Grasslands was on the northern side of Long Island, only half a mile from the Sound through the seclusion of its own woods.

It was quite a show place, the house a great, rambling, brown building with slanting, shingled roofs and a flanking rim of balconies. Behind it the sun struck fire from the glass of long greenhouses, and the tops of garages, stables and out-buildings rose above concealing shrubberies and trellises draped with the pink mantle of the rambler. Mrs. Janney had bought it after her position was assured, paying a price that made all Long Island real estate men glad at heart.

Sitting in a wicker chair, a bag of knitting hanging from its arm, she looked the proper head for such an establishment. She was fifty-four, large—increasing stoutness was one of her minor trials—and was still a handsome woman who "took care of herself." Her morning dress of white embroidered muslin had been made by an artist. Her gray hair, creased by a "permanent wave," was artfully disposed to show the fine shape of her head and conceal the necessary switch. She was too naturally endowed with good taste to indicate her wealth by vulgar display, and her hands showed few rings; the modest brooch of amethysts fastening the neck of her bodice was her sole ornament. And this was all the more commendable, as Mrs. Janney had wonderful jewels of which she was very proud.