Somehow she made her way home, crept painfully, like a mortally wounded animal, up the circular staircase to her room. Bracing her shaking hands on her dressing table, she stared at her reflection in the mirror as if she had never seen that white-faced, enormous-eyed, stricken girl before.

Then horror and loathing of herself swept over her with such force that her knees buckled, and she sank to the floor. As she fell her hand knocked from the dressing table a copy of The Capital City Press, for which she was still subscribing, over her mother’s protest, to glean sparse news of David.

She shuddered as the roll bounced from her knees but in another moment her sick eyes flamed with new life, for half-revealed by the folding of the sheets was an unmistakable picture of the boy she still loved.

Her trembling fingers gouged at the wrapper. Why was his picture on the front page? Was he in trouble? Hurt? Or—married?

Sally, crouching on the floor of her room, spread the crackling sheets of The Capital City Press, her eyes devouring the two-column picture of David Nash. Two lines of type above the photograph leaped out at her:

“Honor graduate of A. & M. inherits grandfather’s farm.”

He hadn’t been injured or killed in an accident, he wasn’t married! In a frenzy of relief and gratitude to the God she had just been accusing of deserting her, Sally Barr, who had been Sally Ford, bent her head until her lips rested on the lips of the photograph. And it was rather a pity that Arthur Van Horne, “connoisseur of kissing,” was not there to see the passionate fervor of the kisses which the girl whom he had dismissed contemptuously was raining upon an unresponsive newspaper picture.

When at last she was calmer she read the short item through. It was the last paragraph that brought her to her feet, her slight body electric with sudden determination:

“Young Nash is living alone in the fine old farmhouse, and apparently is as capable in the kitchen as on the seat of a cultivator. He says his whole heart is in scientific farming, and that his only sweetheart is ‘Sally,’ a blue-ribbon heifer which he is grooming to break the world’s butter-fat production record.”

“David! Darling David!” she was laughing and crying at the same time. “He hasn’t changed! He hasn’t forgotten that we’re half-married!”

Jerking open a drawer of her dressing table she caught sight of her face in the mirror, and her eyes widened with delighted surprise. Gone was the pinched, white, shame-stricken face, and in its place was beauty such as she had never dreamed she possessed. She turned away from the mirror, tremulous and abashed, for what she had to do would not be easy. Her eyes tried to avoid the exquisite photograph of her mother that stood in its blue leather frame on the dressing table, but at last she snatched it up and carried it against her breast as she ran to her desk.

She felt that she was talking to Enid as she wrote, pleading for understanding and forgiveness from those dreaming, misty, cornflower-blue eyes:

“Mother, darling: I’m running away, to go to David. Please don’t try to stop me or bring me back, for I’ll have to run away again if you do. I’m going to marry David because I love him with all my heart and because he is the only man I could ever marry without causing you shame. He already knows the truth, and it made no difference in his love for me. You know how it was with Grant Proctor. You said yourself that if I told him, he would not want to marry me. And I could never marry a man without first telling him the truth. Arthur Van Horne knew and wanted me to be his mistress. He told me today. He did not think I was good enough to be his wife. It would always be the same. And so I am going to David, who knows and loves me anyway.

“Oh, Mother, forgive me for hurting you like this! But don’t you see that I would hurt you more by staying? After a while you would be ashamed of me because I could not marry. I would humiliate you in the eyes of your friends. And I could not be happy ever, away from David. I wanted to die after Arthur Van Horne told me today what he really wanted of me, but now I know I want to live—with David. Please, Mother, don’t think my love for you—”

She could write no more just then. Laying her hot cheek against the cold glass of the framed photograph of her mother she sobbed so loudly, so heart-brokenly that she did not hear a knock upon the door, did not know her grief was being witnessed until she felt a hand upon her shoulder.

“Sally, darling! What in the world is the matter?” It was Enid Barr’s tender, throaty contralto.

Sally sprang to her feet, her eyes wild with fear, her mother’s picture still tightly clutched in her hands. “I—I was writing you a letter!” she gasped. “I—I—”

“Perhaps I’d better read it now,” Enid said in an odd voice, and reached for the scattered sheets of pale gray notepaper on the desk.

Sally wavered to a chair and slumped into it, too dazed with despair to think coherently. She could not bear to look at her mother, for she knew now how cowardly she had been, how abysmally selfish.

Her flaming face was hidden by her hands when, after what seemed many long minutes, she heard her mother’s voice again:

“Poor Sally! You couldn’t trust me? You’d have run away—like that? Without giving me a chance to prove my love for you?”

Sally dropped her hands and stared stupidly at her mother. Enid was coming toward her, the newspaper with David’s picture in it rustling against the crisp taffeta of her bouffant skirt. And on Enid’s face was an expression of such sorrowful but loving reproach that Sally burst into wild weeping.

“Poor little darling!” Enid dropped to her knees beside Sally’s chair and took the girl’s cold, shaking hands in hers. “We all make mistakes, Sally. I’ve made more than my share. Maybe I’m getting old enough now to have a little wisdom. And I want to keep you from making a mistake that would cause both of us—and Court—untold sorrow.”

“But I love David and I shan’t love anyone else,” Sally sobbed, though she knew her resistance was broken.

“I’m forced to believe that now, darling,” Enid said gently. “And I shall not stand in the way of your happiness with him. That is not the mistake I meant.”

“You mean that you’ll let me marry him?” Sally cried incredulously. “Oh, Mother! I love you so!”

“And I love you, Sally.” Enid’s voice broke and she cuddled Sally’s cold hands against the velvety warmth of her own throat. “Your mistake would have been to run away to marry David. You have a mother and father now, Sally. You’re no longer a girl alone, as David called you. You have a place in society as our daughter, whether you want it or not. If David wants to marry you, he must come here to do so, must marry you with our consent and blessing.”

“But—” Sally’s joy suddenly turned to despair again. “He wouldn’t marry a girl with a fortune. He told me so when he was here.”

“That was when he was penniless himself,” Enid pointed out. “I’ve just read this newspaper story about his inheriting his grandfather’s farm. It’s a small fortune in itself, and since there’s no immediate danger of your inheriting either my money or Court’s, I don’t believe he will let your prospective wealth stand in the way—if he loves you.”

“Oh, he does!” Sally laughed through her tears. “Look!” She snatched the newspaper from the floor and pointed to the last paragraph of the story about David. “He named his prize heifer after me! It says here his only sweetheart is ‘Sally’! Oh, Mother, I didn’t know anyone could live through such misery and such happiness as I felt today! I wanted to kill myself after Van—Oh!”

“Tell me just exactly what he said to you!” Enid commanded, her lovely voice sharpened with anger and fear.

When Sally had repeated the contemptuous, sneering speech as accurately as possible, her mother’s face, which had been almost ugly with anger, cleared miraculously.

“The man is an unspeakable cad, darling, but I am almost glad it happened, since you escaped unscathed. He won’t bother us again. I’m sure of it! He is not quite low enough to gossip about me to my friends. It is evident that he planned all along to use his knowledge as a club to force you to submit to his desires. And now that he doesn’t want you any more, he will lose interest in the whole subject. I’ve known Van nearly all my life and I’ve never known him to act the cad before. He’s probably despising himself, now that his fever has cooled. If you marry David with our consent, he’ll probably turn up at your wedding and offer sincere congratulations with a whispered reassurance as to his ability to keep our secret.”

“When I marry David, not if!” Sally cried exultantly, flinging her arms about her mother’s neck. “Oh, I’m so glad I have a mother!”

“Don’t strangle me!” Enid laughed. “Leave me strength to write a proposal of marriage to this cocksure young farmer who brags that he is as capable in the kitchen as on the seat of a cultivator!”

“He can’t cook half as well as I can!” Sally scoffed. “You ought to taste one of my apple pies! He can play nurse to his blue-ribbon stock all he wants to, but he’s got to let me do the cooking! And, Mother, you’ll tell him how much I love him, won’t you? And—and you might remind him that we only need half a marriage ceremony—the last half. Wouldn’t it be fun if we could go back to Canfield and let ‘the marrying parson’ finish the job?”

“Don’t be too confident!” Enid warned her. “He may refuse you!” But at sight of Sally’s dismay she relented. “I know he loves you, darling. Don’t worry. If I were you I’d get busy immediately on a trousseau.”

“One dozen kitchen aprons will top the list,” Sally laughed.

Four days later the second telegram that Sally had received from David arrived. “Catching next train East, darling. Happiest man in the world. Can we be married day I arrive? Am wiring your blessed mother also. I’ll be loving you always. David.”

“Of course you can’t be married the day he arrives!” Enid exclaimed indignantly when Sally showed her the telegram. “I’m going to give you a real wedding.”

“I think the children are right, Enid.” Courtney Barr unexpectedly championed Sally in her protest. “A quiet impromptu wedding, by all means. Our announcement to the papers will indicate that we approve, and since the boy is unknown in New York and Sally has only just been introduced, I think the less fuss the better.”

Sally kissed him impulsively, aware, though the knowledge did not hurt her, that he liked her better now that she was to leave his home, than he had ever liked her. David arrived on Monday, and was guest of honor that night at a small party of Enid’s and Sally’s most intimate friends, at which time announcement of the forthcoming marriage was made. They remembered having seen him briefly at Sally’s coming-out party and so handsome he was, so much at ease, now that he was to be married to the girl he loved, that it occurred to none of Enid’s guests to question his eligibility. Sally, sitting proudly beside him, looked happily from her mother to David, knew that in gaining a husband she was not losing a mother, as she would have done if Enid had not interrupted the writing of that terrible letter.

On Tuesday Sally and David, accompanied by Enid and Courtney Barr, went to the municipal building for the marriage license, and the afternoon papers carried the news on the front pages, under such headlines as: “Popular Deb to Marry Rich Farmer.” But in all the stories there was no hint of scandal, no reportorial prying into the “past” of the adopted daughter of the rich and prominent Courtney Barrs.

The wedding took place on Wednesday, in the drawing-room of the Barrs’ Fifth Avenue mansion, and the next morning, in his account of the “very quiet” wedding, a society editor commented: “The ceremony was read by the Reverend Horace Greer, of Canfield, ——, the choice of celebrant being dictated by unexplained sentiment.”

What the society editor did not know was that “the marrying parson” of Canfield spoke only the last half of the marriage service, beginning where he had been interrupted nearly three years before.

Sally and David were no longer “half married.”

THE END

Don’t Stop Here!

There are more stories that will thrill and fascinate you for the same unprecedented low cost.

What greater measure of enjoyment can be gleaned from any source than from good books? They remove all boundaries, stimulate the imagination and banish dull care. They lift you out of every-day drudgeries and grim realities of life and transport you into the realms of fancy and romance.

Consult the following pages for other White House novels that are guaranteed to please.

WHIRLWIND

By Eleanor Early

Author of Orchid

Sybil Thorne was 18 when she first got herself talked about. A creature of moods and tempers, beautiful, headstrong, believing herself a war bride, she vowed never to marry again. Yet, after promising Craig Newhall to marry him, the man who told her he could never be jealous of a dead man, she impetuously married a man she had known but a few days aboard a steamer for Havana.

Disillusioned after a few days’ romance, she returns without her husband. She does not hear from him until Fate throws her into his path again as he is about to leave with her sister-in-law. On the day she gets her divorce, he is killed in an accident. That night “she put on a dress of flame and went to the Follies.”

Almost having decided finally to marry Craig, back from the grave came her soldier boy sweetheart. Sybil finally finds her happiness, but only after the greatest tragedy of her life.

White House Novels Are An Outstanding Value

GOOD GIRL

By Roy L. Foley

The greatest mystery in Nancy Deane’s life was herself. Scarcely a day passed that she did not say, “I wonder who I really am.”

Then one day Nancy not only found out with crashing suddenness but she also lost her job.

Which meant she had to look for work in spite of the fact that she was one of the prominent Deanes.

In quest of a job she is thrown into strange company for her but not so strange in this jazz-mad, gin-drinking age.

Nancy is a beautiful girl and as a result runs the whole gamut of experiences that would beset a beautiful young lady from a small town.

As Ginger Varden, sophisticated but big hearted, said, “Listen about the girl who didn’t know she had ‘it’.”

For the Stories You Like, Read White House Novels

THE YELLOW STUB

By Ernest Lynn

A furious tale of modern crime, involving a clash between a resolved youth and modern gangdom. A fast, intriguing exposÉ of organized crime in a large city, with its many ramifications and a plot that defies solution until the breath-taking climax, written by a newspaper reporter who knows his underworld.

A staid, respectable citizen of Grafton is found murdered in the most disreputable hotel in town. The community and the victim’s family are not only shocked but his family is also faced with disgrace because in the murdered man’s room is found a woman’s handkerchief.

There is one other clue—The Yellow Stub—which proves to be the key link in an amazing chain of mystery and which plays the principal part in removing the cloud which might have hung forever over the dead man’s memory.

With this slender clue, alone and armed only with the weapons of courage and persistence, the murdered man’s son sets out to solve the mystery and avenge his father’s slayers. He is led into a vicious labyrinth of widely ramified modern gangdom, with danger and death lurking in every shadow, with unbridled passions ruled by avarice and hate.

His task is complicated by two beautiful women, but Jim Rand succeeds in his mission, with a climax as surprising as it is dramatic.

A stirring story of the triumph of clean youth over safely entrenched, organized crime, with a thrill on every page.

White House Novels Are Guaranteed to Please

RIVAL WIVES

By Anne Austin

Author of “Daughters of Midas,” “The Black Pigeon,” and “The Avenging Parrot”

Nan Carroll was Attorney John Morgan’s capable private secretary ... “Almost a junior partner in the firm,” insisted Willis Todd, Nan’s only boy friend. It was Willis, too, who made Nan realize that she was in love with Morgan, Morgan who idolized his beautiful selfish wife, Iris. Shocked at finding herself in love with a married man, Nan decided to resign her position.

Circumstances made this impossible, however, and before she could carry out her resolve, a swift series of thrilling happenings threatened to change the course of six lives.

Here are characters you will recognize as real, faced with problems of absorbing interest. Romance and marriage, mother love and heartlessness, woven together to produce a story genuinely thrilling.

Anne Austin has succeeded in writing another story of compelling interest. When you learn the problems that face the figures in this book, you will want to read the solution.

Write for Our Complete List

THE BLAZING HORIZON

By Ernest Lynn

The True Story of Pawnee Bill

A thrilling, red-blooded tale of a picturesque character against the background of hell-roaring towns where men drank, quarreled, killed and went about their business; of primeval passions ruling the hearts of men who blazed the path of an Empire; a true story of the early days of the Southwest.

Gordon Lillie, as Pawnee Bill, the hero of countless men and boys of this and past generations, stood in the doorway of the restaurant in Caldwell one Saturday afternoon. Before him were cattle thieves, horse thieves, Indians, desperadoes, women with hard eyes and painted cheeks. He stood on the threshold of a career that was to be one of the most colorful and stirring in the annals of the glamorous Southwest.

More than a novel because far stranger than fiction, THE BLAZING HORIZON is an authentic account of the opening of Oklahoma, a swift and vivid recital of the struggle of thousands to gain a niche in the blazing horizon.

Starting in the eighties, it carries one on a wave of breathless excitement through the great rush of the Boomers, 50,000 strong, who stormed their way into the new territory; through days of hardships and adventure; through hair-raising episodes of courage and chivalry; through all the pains of the birth of a new country.

Against this picturesque background, Ernest Lynn here pictures a delightful romance, written after months of patient first-hand research tracing the career of Pawnee Bill and the birth of Oklahoma.

Ask Your Dealer for a List of White House Novels

JEALOUS WIVES

By Ernest Lynn

Author of “The Blazing Horizon,” “The Yellow Stub”

Should there be a single standard of morals for men and women? Should a wife convict a husband on circumstantial evidence? Is a woman’s intuition always right?

In JEALOUS WIVES is one married couple who preach the single standard from the angle that each may participate in personal freedom without objection from the other. But, once put in practice, the agreement ends in disaster.

Then there are two main characters who believe in the single standard; that each shall live only for the other. And that marriage succeeds only after a near-disaster when the husband makes only a timid attempt at flirtation.

A vivid, fast story of the present day.

Consult Our List for Charming Love Stories and Thrilling Mysteries

We will update this book if we find any errors.

This book can be found under: /ebooks/35077

Please read this before you distribute or use this work.

You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.