“I’m cross; I don’t care to drive to-day. We will go back home,” she said to Adrian Vance sharply. Mrs. Montague spied her coming, and came to meet her, saying: “You got back sooner than I looked for, Rosalind, but none too soon, for a cablegram has just come to you, saying Senator Bonair cannot sail as soon as he expected, but hopes not to be delayed much longer.” “He cannot come? Why? Is this another scheme to postpone the wedding?” Rosalind cried, in a loud, angry voice. “Hush, Rosalind, don’t fly off into a rage so fast, and I’ll tell you the rest. The senator explains his disappointment by saying that Charley and his wife had a wreck while coming on their automobile from Trouville to Paris, and that both are so terribly injured they may not survive the day.” CHAPTER XXXV. DELAYS ARE DANGEROUS. It was true, that dreadful cablegram that shocked even Rosalind’s cruel heart! For a moment she gasped with surprise and grew pale even to her rosy lips. But the next moment she threw off the spell and laughed gratingly, so that even the worldly-wise mother said rebukingly: “How can you laugh, my dear girl? It is really very shocking to think of that young pair being so terribly injured in an automobile accident that they must almost certainly die.” But Rosalind only laughed again. “Mamma, what is the use of your acting goody-goody when you know what all this means to me?” she sneered. “In the first place, I hate Charley Bonair who jilted me, and his wife who supplanted me, with a bitter hatred that can only rejoice in their deaths, so why should I pull a long face, when nothing could please me better? And, secondly, if they had lived, old Moneybags might have revoked his disinheritance of his son, and cut me out of some of his millions at his death. So what seems like a calamity to them is a benefit to me, and I rejoice accordingly. Mother,” she added, as with a sudden thought, “I shall cross the ocean to my betrothed’s side! I shall have to do the sympathy act, of course--snivel and whine, and pretend to be sorry they are dead, while my heart is full of rejoicing! But no matter, so that I gain my end!” “But, Rosalind, my dear, what can be gained by such proceedings?” “How stupid you are, to be sure, mamma! You must be getting into your dotage not to see that if he goes into mourning for his son, and objects to a public marriage with all its attendant sensation, I can easily lure him into a quiet, private marriage on the spot, and come home Mrs. Senator Bonair, don’t you see?” “Yes, yes, that is a very clever idea, Rosalind--a good idea all around, for then we shall be spared the trouble and expense of a grand wedding, for which it would have been hard to raise the money, and your father’s affairs in such a fix! But for that matter it won’t be easy to get it for your trip, either. Besides, you know, I cannot leave your father’s sick bed to chaperon you, and you could not properly go alone.”