She was reduced to drawing patience from what Guion told her as to his illness checking temporarily the course of legal action.  Most of the men with whom it lay to set the law in motion, notably Dixon, the District-Attorney, were old friends of his, who would hesitate to drag him from a sick-room to face indictment.  He had had long interviews with Dixon about the case already, and knew how reluctant that official was to move in the matter, anyhow; but as soon as he, Guion, was out and about again, all kindly scruples would have to yield.  “You’ll find,” he explained to her, “that the question as to breaking-camp will settle itself then.  And besides,” he added, “it’ll be better to wait till Ashley comes and you know what he’s likely to do for you.”

With the last consideration she could not but agree, though she shrank from his way of putting it.  It was some satisfaction at least to know that, since the two hundred cards she had sent out had reached their recipients, the process of public penance must in some measure have been started.  She had seen no one who could tell her what the effect had been; her bridesmaids evidently knew enough to consider silence the better part of sympathy; not even Drusilla Fane had looked in or called her on the telephone during the last day or two; but she could imagine pretty well the course that comment and speculation must be taking through the town.  There would be plenty of blame, some jubilation, and, she felt sure, not a little sympathy withal.  There was among her acquaintance a local American pride that had always been jealous of her European preferences and which would take the opportunity to get in its bit of revenge, but in general opinion would be kindly.  There came an afternoon when she felt the desire to go forth to face it, to take her first impressions of the world in her new relationship toward it.  She had not been beyond their own gate since the altered conditions had begun to obtain.  She had need of the fresh air; she had need to find her bearings; she had need of a few minutes’ intercourse with some one besides her father, so as not to imperil her judgment by dwelling too incessantly on an idee fixe.  Rupert Ashley would land that night or the next morning.  In forty-eight hours he would probably be in Boston.  It was prudent, she reflected, to be as well poised and as sure of herself as possible before his arrival on the scene.

Her father was slightly better.  He could leave his bed, and, wrapped in his violet dressing-gown, could lie on the chaise-longue, surrounded by the luxurious comforts that were a matter of course to him.  As she made him snug he observed with a grim smile that his recovery was a pity.  He could almost hear, so he said, Dixon and Johnstone and Hecksher and others of his cronies making the remark that his death would be a lucky way out of the scrape.

She had come, dressed for the street, to tell him she was walking down to the Temples’, to see what had become of Drusilla Fane.  She thought it needless to add that she was inventing the errand in order to go out and take notes on the new aspect the world must henceforth present to her.