"Archibald has ordered George out of the house. He--George, I mean--had given him his promise not to see Florrie again, and it seems that he--he broke it. There has been a dreadful scene. I never imagined that Archibald could be so angry. He was terrible--and he is ill anyway and in great trouble about his financial affairs. I have been worried to death about him for weeks. He says things are going so badly downtown that he can't stave off the crash any longer, and now--this--this--" She broke down utterly, burying her convulsed face in her hands, which even in the instant of horror and tragedy, Gabriella noticed, had been manicured since the morning. "George has gone--we think he has gone off with Florrie," she cried, "and he--he will never come back as long as Archibald lives." She was not thinking of Gabriella. True to the deepest instincts of her nature, she thought first of her son, then of her husband. It was not that she did not care for her daughter-in-law, did not sympathize; but the fact remained that Gabriella was only George's wife to her, while George was flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone, soul of her soul. Though her choice was not deliberate, though it was unconscious and instinctive--nevertheless, she had chosen. At the crucial moment instinct had risen superior to reason, and she had chosen, not with her judgment, but with every quivering nerve and fibre of her being. Gabriella was right, but George was her son; and had it been possible to secure George's happiness by sacrificing the right to the wrong, she would have made that sacrifice without hesitation, without scruple, and without regret. "There's his father now," she whispered, lifting her disfigured face. "Oh, Gabriella, I believe it will kill me!" While Gabriella stood there waiting for George's father to enter, and listening to his slow, deliberate tread on the stairs, the heavy, laborious tread of a man who is uncertain of his strength, she remembered vividly, as if she were living it over again, the night she had waited by her fire to tell George that his first child was to be born. Many thoughts passed through her mind, and at last these thoughts resolved themselves into a multitude of crowding images--all distinct and vivid images of George's face. She saw his face as she had first seen and loved it, with its rich colouring, its blue-gray eyes, like wells of romance she had once thought, its look of poetry and emotion which had covered so much that was merely commonplace and gross. She saw him as he had looked at their marriage, as he had looked, bending over her after her first child was born, and then she saw him as he had parted from her that morning--flushed, sneering, a little coarsened, but still boyish, still charming. Well, it was all over now. It had been over so long that she had even ceased to regret it--for she was not by nature one of the women who could wear mourning for a lifetime.