NOT UNDER THE LAW _GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL’S_ _Charming and Wholesome Romances_ The Story of a Whim Re-Creations Tomorrow About This Time The Tryst The City of Fire Cloudy Jewel Exit Betty The Search The Red Signal The Enchanted Barn The Finding of Jasper Holt The Obsession of Victoria Gracen Miranda The Best Man Lo, Michael! Marcia Schuyler Phoebe Deane Dawn of the Morning The Mystery of Mary The Girl from Montana The Big Blue Soldier NOT UNDER THE LAW BY GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL AUTHOR OF “MARCIA SCHUYLER”, “THE CITY OF FIRE”, ETC. [Illustration] PHILADELPHIA & LONDON J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1925 COPYRIGHT, 1924 AND 1925, BY THE GOLDEN RULE COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. NOT UNDER THE LAW CHAPTER I The kitchen door stood open wide, and the breath from the meadow blew freshly across Joyce Radway’s hot cheeks and forehead as she passed hurriedly back and forth from the kitchen stove to the diningroom table preparing the evening meal. It had been a long, hard day and she was very tired. The tears seemed to have been scorching her eyelids since early morning, and because her spirit would not let them out they seemed to have been flowing back into her heart till its beating was almost stopped by the deluge. Somehow it had been the hardest day in all the two weeks since her aunt died; the culmination of all the hard times since Aunt Mary had been taken sick and her son Eugene Massey brought his wife and two children home to live. To begin with, at the breakfast table Eugene had snarled at Joyce for keeping her light burning so long the night before. He told her he couldn’t afford to pay electric bills for her to sit up and read novels. This was most unjust since he knew that Joyce never had any novels to read, but that she was studying for an examination which would finish her last year of normal school work and fit her for a teacher. But then her cousin was seldom just. He took especial delight in tormenting her. Sometimes it seemed incredible that he could possibly be Aunt Mary’s son, he was so utterly unlike her in every way. But he resembled markedly the framed picture of his father Hiram Massey, which hung in the parlor, whom Joyce could but dimly remember as an uncle who never smiled at her. She had controlled the tears then that sprang to her eyes and tried to answer in a steady voice: “I’m sorry, Gene, I was studying, I wasn’t reading a novel. You know last night was the last chance I had to study. The examination is today. Maybe when I get a school I’ll be able to pay those electric light bills and some other things too.”