He took the little empty mesh bag from her hand and slipped the money in it, despite her protest that she had now no need of it. “It is never prudent to travel without an emergency fund,” he opined sagaciously. “My affairs are managed by Hugh Treherne now, for a share of the proceeds. He did not want any compensation at all, but I insisted on it. Wonderful head for detail he has, Ducie. I’d go to the asylum and stay there a term or two if it would educate me to make every edge cut as he can.” When they had alighted on the platform of the first station and stood lifting their hats, as her pale face looked out of the window while the train glided on, Colonel Kenwynton spoke his mind. “She is as sane as I am, and a fine, well-bred woman. She has married a brute of a husband, and if I were not such an excellent Christian, Ducie, I don’t know what I wouldn’t wish might happen to him.” Ducie said nothing. Floyd-Rosney was a distasteful subject that he was averse to discuss. They took their places in the electric street car which would whisk them back to town speedily, and, as the train slowly backed on the switch, she saw them through the window, as yet the sole occupants on the return run. CHAPTER XIX If Floyd-Rosney’s temper were less imperious, if he had had less confidence in the dictates of his will, which he misconstrued as his matured judgment, he could not have so signally disregarded the feelings of others; if only in obedience to the dictates of policy, he could not have been so oblivious of the possibility of adverse action, successfully exploited. Maddened by his wife’s revolt against his plans, futile though he deemed it, he would not await her return from the nursery whither she had hurried to verify his words. He burned with rage under the lash of her fiery denunciation--“Brute!--Fiend!” How dared she! He wondered that he had not beaten her with his clenched fists! He had some fear of being betrayed into violence, some doubt of his own self-restraint that induced him to rush forth into the street and evade her frenzied jeremiad when she found the child was indeed gone.