The effect on Floyd-Rosney of his wife’s legal proceedings was deep and radical. His counsel constantly noted in him a sort of stunned surprise, as if contemplating some fantastic revulsion of the natural course of events. He had fashioned this result as definitely as if he had planned its every detail, yet he regarded it with an affronted amazement that he should be called upon to experience events so untoward. He had a disposition to belittle the efficiency of the demonstration. He perceived with a snort of rage and contempt the seriousness with which his counsel regarded it and declared violently that she could never get a decree.

“You mean to defend the suit, then?” Mr. Stacey asked, very cool, and pallid, and dispassionate.

“What else?” thundered Floyd-Rosney, the veins in his forehead blue and swollen, his face scarlet, his hands quivering.

“I can’t see upon what grounds, in view of the terms of retraxit.”

“You dictated the terms of that precious performance,” declared Floyd-Rosney, with vindictive pleasure in shifting the blame.

But Mr. Stacey easily eluded the burden.

“Under your specific instructions as to the facts to which you made affidavit,” he said, coldly.

It was perhaps evidence how Floyd-Rosney was beginning to acquire a modicum of prudence under the fierce tuition of circumstance that he avoided a breach with his lawyers. He heartily cursed them in his heart, recollecting the many large fees they had received at his hands, minimizing altogether the arduous work and professional learning that had earned them. He broke off the consultation, which he postponed to a future day, and left them with a stunned realization that these men, whose capacity and experience he had so often tested, were of opinion that he had no defense against the preposterous suit of his wife, that she would receive her decree and be awarded the custody of the child and ample alimony which it would be adjudged he should pay.

He set his teeth, gritting them hard when he remembered how these lawyers had sought to induce him to defer filing his bill, to mitigate his allegations, to investigate the circumstances more closely. Their judgment had been justified in every particular, and though showing no triumph—Mr. Stacey was too completely a legal machine for such manifestation—he gave attestation of his human composition by the cold distaste, which he could not disguise, for the subsequent developments.

“Damned if he is not ashamed to be concerned with me,” Floyd-Rosney said to himself, fairly staggered by the preposterous climax of the situation.

He began to have a great desire to get out of the country, to be quit of all the sights and associations of his recent life, but he had pressed the preparations for the Duciehurst suit, and his absence now as the date of the trial approached would have the aspect of a pusillanimous retreat, specially obnoxious to him in view of the fact that the Ducies were his opponents. The overthrow of his plans and expectations of his wife’s return to him and the rehabilitation of their life together was like the demonstration of some great earthquake or cataclysmal disaster; it had destroyed all the symmetry and purpose of his life; his outlook was as upon a blank desert of despair, an “abomination of desolation.” That human heart of his, despite its overlay of selfish aims and turbulent pride, had depths seldom stirred of genuine feeling; he yearned for sympathy; he poignantly lacked the touch of his absent child’s hand; the adoring look in the limpid infantile eyes; he felt at every turn the loss of the incense of adulation that his wife had been wont to burn before him. It had made sweet the atmosphere of his life, and until it ceased he had never known how dependent upon it his very respiration had grown to be—it was as the breath of his life. While he sat in his solitary library, brooding and silent, reviewing in his enforced leisure and loneliness the successive steps by which the destruction of his domestic happiness had been compassed, his brow darkened and grew fierce as he fixed the date of its inception to the meeting with Adrian Ducie on the Cherokee Rose, and the discovery that his wife could subtly distinguish between these facsimile faces of the two brothers the lineaments of her former lover. Even now his logic strove to reassert itself. Of course, the man’s face was intimately familiar to her; there must be tricks of expression, the lift of an eyebrow, the curl of a lip, methods of enunciation peculiar to one and alien to the other, distinctive enough to a keen and habituated observer. But, alack! this was not all, offensive as were its suggestions to his pride of monopoly. He said to himself that from the moment of the presentation of this vivid reminder of her old lover’s face was inaugurated the recurrence of the Ducie influence in her life. Here began that strange, covert revolt against him and all his theories and plans, which had grown inch by inch till it possessed her. She had never been the same, and he—fool that he was—through his magnanimity in withdrawing the allegations of his bill, had furnished her with the certainty of gaining a decree in her counter suit for divorce, of securing an ample fortune in the belittling name of alimony, and the opportunity of marrying and endowing with this wealth, derived from him, the penniless Randal Ducie, whose baleful influence had destroyed for him all that made life worth living.

Floyd-Rosney had never been an intemperate man, but in this grim seclusion he began to drink heavily. He had piqued himself upon his delicate taste, his acumen as a judge of fine wines, but the Chambertin and ChÂteau Yquem remained untouched during his hasty dinners, while the brandy decanter had taken up a permanent position on the library table, and he had ordered up from the cellar an old and rich whisky that had been laid down by his father before he was born, and that he had, so far as the butler knew, never yet tasted.

It was difficult for the lurking magnate, in his sullen seclusion, to face the eyes of his own domestic staff; he could not bring himself to confront the questioning, speculative gaze of the streets, the club, the driving park. Even such rencontres as chanced when he went to consult his counsel, whom, but for very shame he would have summoned to him, he found an ordeal. He had grown poignantly sensitive and keenly perceptive as well, and was discriminating in minute points of facial expression and gradations of manner. He could differentiate embarrassment, commiseration,—and how pity stung him!—reprobation, and oftenest of all, a sort of covert relish, an elation, that with any personal relation would have meant triumph. “They are nearly as well pleased as if I were broken,” he would say cynically to himself. But there was no breach of courtesy, no abatement of the deep respect usually tendered to a magnate and millionaire. He was keenly alive to detect the insignia of a diminution of consideration, but his little world salaamed as heretofore, for he was by no means broken, not even if he should have to pay heavy alimony, and lose Duciehurst into the bargain. The experience of these encounters, however, weighed heavily on his nerves, now all a-quiver and jangling with the effects of his deep potations.

His home was odious to him; his covert speculations as to the deductions of the servants, whom ordinarily he would have disregarded as mere worms of the earth, afflicted him. He was keenly conscious of his humiliated position in their eyes, cognizant as he knew them to be of his expectation of his wife’s return, and the elaborate preparations he had made and personally supervised for her reception. He found a greater degree of privacy and comfort on his yacht, which he ordered up from New Orleans, where she had been lying for a month past, refitted and revictualed, awaiting his summons. He steamed down the river to the Gulf on one occasion, but finding himself out of touch with his counsel in the Duciehurst case, and realizing that some final decision must be reached as to his course in the divorce suit, he confined his wanderings to idly cruising up and down the river, stopping at prearranged points for mail or telegrams.

In this resource he experienced a surcease of the harassments that infested his life on shore. His skipper knew little and cared less of land-lubber interests—as maritime an animal as a crab. He had, indeed, with a brightening eye and a ready courtesy, asked, when Floyd-Rosney came over the side of the Aglaia, if the madam was not going to favor the ship’s company with her presence. Being answered shortly in the negative he heartily protested his regret.

“The best sailor she is of any lady I ever saw,” he declared, and added that if they were to do some deep-sea stunts they need not consult the barometer for weather signs. She cared no more for weather than a stormy petrel. He always looked on the madam’s presence as a good omen, he said; he had a bit of the blarney and a bit of poesy in his composition, his ancestry hailing from the Emerald Isle.

“She has brought no good luck to her husband,” Floyd-Rosney reflected, grimly.

It was grateful to him, however, to perceive that the man knew naught of his recent discomfitures and humiliation; of very meager consequence such an opinion would have been ordinarily, but the evident ignorance of the skipper enabled him to hold his head higher. The skipper read nothing in the newspapers but the shipping news, and but for the change in Floyd-Rosney’s bibulous habit he might never have been the wiser.

“He’s drinking like a fish,” he said in surprise to the second officer. “That’s new with him.”

“Seems to me,” responded the subordinate, meditatively, “I heard something when we was in port in Boloxi about him and the madam havin’ had some sort o’ row.”

“I hate to trust him with the brand new dinky skiff,” said the skipper. “He ain’t a practiced hand; I seen him run her nose up on a drift log lying on the levee with a shock that might have started every seam in her.”

But the yacht, with all that appertained to it, was Floyd-Rosney’s property, and the skipper could only enjoy his fears for the proper care of its appurtenances.

For Floyd-Rosney had contracted the habit of scouting about in the skiff, while the yacht swung at anchor, awaiting his pleasure. The solitude was soothing to his exacerbated nerves. He could, indeed, be alone, for he took the oars himself, and as he was a strong, athletic man the exercise was doubtless beneficial and tonic. The passing of the congestion of commerce from the great river to the railroads had brought the stream to an almost primitive loneliness. Thus he would often row for hours, seeing not a human being, not the smoke of a riverside habitation, not a craft of any of the multifarious species once wont to ply the waters of this great inland sea. The descriptive epithet was merited by its aspect at this stage of the water. Bank-full, it stretched as far as the eye could reach. Only persons familiar with the riparian contours could detect in a ruffled line on the horizon the presence of a growth of cottonwood on the swampy Arkansas shore.

One of these days, when he was thus loitering about, the sky was dull and clouded; the river was dark, and reflected its mood. The tender green of spring was keen almost with the effect of glitter on the bank, and he noted how high the water stood against the levees of plantations, here and there, menacing overflow. When a packet chanced to pass he bent low to his oars, avoiding possible recognition from any passenger on the guards or officer on deck, but he uncharacteristically exchanged greetings with a shanty boat, now and again propelled down the stream with big sweeps; none of the humble amphibians of the cabins had ever heard, he was sure, of the great Floyd-Rosney. Sometimes he called out a question, courteously answered, or with a response of chaff, roughly gay. Once, being doubtful of the locality, he paused on his oars to ask information of an ancient darkey, who was paddling in a dug-out along the margin of the river.

“You are going to have an overflow hereabout,” added Floyd-Rosney.

The old darkey, nothing loath, joined in the dismal foreboding, keeping his craft stationary while he lent himself to the joys of conversation with so aristocratic a gentleman.

“Dat’s so, Boss; we’se gwine under, shore, ef de ribber don’t quit dis foolishness.”

“Whose plantation is that beyond the point, where the water is standing against the levee?”

“Dat, sah, is de Mountjoy place, but hit’s leased dis year ter Mr. Ran Ducie. I reckon mebbe you is ’quainted wid him. Mighty fine man, Mr. Ran is, an’ nobody so well liked in the neighborhood.”

Without another word Floyd-Rosney bent to his oars. Was there no escape from this ill-omened association of ideas?

The old darkey, checked in the exploitation of his old-time manners and balked in the opportunity of polite conversation, gazed in amazed discomfiture after Floyd-Rosney’s skiff, as it sped swiftly down the river, then resumed his progress, gruff and lowering, ejaculating in affront:

“White folks is cur’ous, shore; ain’t got no manners, nor no raisin’, nor no p’liteness, nohow.”

Floyd-Rosney’s equipoise had been greatly shaken by the strain upon his nerves and mental forces, this depletion of his powers of resistance supplemented by constant and inordinate drinking, contrary to his usual custom. Thus he had become susceptible to even the slightest strain on his self-control. He noticed that with the renewal of the mental turmoils that he had sought to elude—conjured up by the chance mention of the man’s name that meant so much to him in many ways—his stroke grew erratic and uncertain; once one of the oars was almost wrenched from his grasp by a swirl of the current. He was well in mid-stream, in deep water, and he realized that should he lose his capacity to handle the little craft he would be in immediate danger of capsizing and drowning, for his strength in swimming could never enable him to breast that tumultuous tide at flood height. The yacht was out of sight, lying at anchor in the bight of a bend, that cut him off from all chance of being observed and rescued by the skipper. He summoned his presence of mind and let the boat drift for a few moments while he took from his pocket a brandy flask, and drank deeply from its undiluted contents. The potent elixir rallied his forces—steadied his nerves. With its artificial stimulus his hand was once more firm, his eye bright and sure. But its stimulus was not lasting, as he knew, and fearing an incapacity to handle the boat in this swirling waste of waters he directed his course toward an island, as it seemed, thinking that thence he would signal the Aglaia and wait for her to steam up and take him off. There he would be in full view from the yacht.

As he neared his destination he perceived—as he had not hitherto, because of the potency of the brandy—that the island of his beclouded mirage was the wreck of the Cherokee Rose, still aground on the sand-bar, although waters swirled around her, and fish swam through her cabin doors and the slime and ooze of the river had befouled the erstwhile dapper whiteness of her guards and saloon walls. He lay on his oars for a space, regarding with meditative eyes the ruin, analogous, it seemed to the far-reaching ruin that had its inception here and that had trailed him so ruthlessly many a day. In his dreary idleness he was sensible of a species of languid curiosity as to the extent of the ravages of water and decay in comparatively so short a time. Only a few months ago, in the past October, he had been aboard the packet, when trim and sound, and immaculately white and fully equipped, she had run aground on this treacherous bar, where her bones were destined to rot. He wondered that the wreckers had left so much, unless, indeed, their operations were frustrated by the sudden impending rise of the waters. The craft lay listed to one side, the hull evidently smashed like an egg-shell by the furious onslaught of the storm, but a part of the superstructure—the texas and the pilot-house—was still above water, though canted queerly askew.

Floyd-Rosney rowed briskly to the stair that formerly served to ascend to the hurricane deck, the skiff running up flush with the flight. He sprang out—first trying the integrity of the wood with a cautious foot, and tied the painter firmly to one of the posts that supported the hurricane deck, leaving the boat leaping on the ripples, as if seeking to break away from some ponderous creature of its own kind that would fain drag it down into the hopeless devastations of a lair in the depths.

With a deep sigh Floyd-Rosney slowly ascended the few steps of the stair above the current, and stood looking drearily down upon the structure wherein were lived those scenes so momentous in his fate so short a time ago. As he walked along the canted floor, his white cap in his hand, his head bared to the breeze, he glanced now and again through the shattered cabin lights down into the saloon, seeing there the water continuously swirling in the melancholy spaces, once full of radiance and cheer and genial company. All the doors of the staterooms had been removed, both those opening on the guards and the inner ones, of which the panels were decorated with mirrors and which gave upon the saloon. A vague jingle caught his attention; a fragment of an electrolier still clung to the ceiling and sometimes, shaken by the ripples, its glass pendants sent forth a shrill, disconsolate vibration, like a note of funereal keening. Suddenly from amidst that weird desolation of shifting waters a face stared up at him. It was unmistakable. He saw it distinctly. But when he looked again it was gone.

Floyd-Rosney was trembling from head to foot. He had turned ghastly pale. But for the wall of the texas against which he staggered he might have fallen. He did not question the reality of his impression. It was as definite as the light of day,—a face strangely familiar, yet sinister, seen in the murky depths. He wondered wildly if it could be the drowned face of some victim of the wreck, or if this were now impossible, some curious explorer such as himself, meeting here more serious mystery than any he had sought. The next moment he broke into a harsh laugh of scorn. It was his own reflection! At the end of the saloon, where the craft lay highest on the bar, one of the mirrored doors, shattered doubtless in careless handling in process of removal, had been left as useless. In this fragment he had seen his face for one moment, and then the ripples played over the glass and the semblance was gone, returning now again. But Floyd-Rosney had no mind to watch these weird, illusory antics. It was horrible to him to see his face mirrored anew, distorted in those foul depths where he had been once well and happy and full of exuberant life and hope, with wife and child and fortune, every desire of his heart gratified, both hands full and running over.

As he turned away he was surprised to note how the shock had shaken his composure, his nerves. He was loath to quit his posture against the wall of the texas that had supported him. His long, intent gaze into the swirl of the waters had induced a tendency to vertigo, and he looked about for something that might serve for a seat. The pilot-house was but two or three steps above, and there were seats built into the wall, he remembered.

He made shift to clamber up the short flight. The door was still on its hinges, but so defaced and splintered as to be not worth removing, and so askew as to be difficult to open. With one strong effort, for Floyd-Rosney was a powerful man, he burst it ajar, although it swung back to its previous position, implying a like difficulty in opening it again.

He sat down on the farther side, on the bare bench, the upholstery having disappeared, and waited to regain his composure. Once more he had recourse to the brandy flask, now nearly empty. Once more the fires streamed through nerve and fiber, revivifying his every impulse. He felt that he was himself again, as he gazed through the blank spaces where the glass was wont to be, at the vast expanse of the great river, now a glittering sheen under a sudden cast of the sun. Beautiful chromatic suggestions were mirrored back from the sky; a stretch of illuminated lilac, an ethereal hue touched the vivid green of the opposite bank. A play of rose and gold was in the westward ripples, and one bar, athwart the tawny reach, of crude, intense vermillion betokened a cloud of scarlet, harbinger of sunset in the offing. He could see the little house on stilts to the left hand, now like a boat on the water. In the enforced stay here, when aground on the sand-bar, he had time to familiarize himself with even unvalued elements of the landscape. To the right was a bayou, the current running with great force down its broad channel, as wide as an ordinary river, and on the other side of the bight of the bend, lay the Aglaia. He wondered if the Cherokee Rose was an object of the scrutiny of the skipper’s binocle. Floyd-Rosney thought that he should be on the watch for his employer’s return, which was doubtless the fact, as he had no other duties in hand.

Floyd-Rosney was still eyeing the craft, meditating how best to signal his wish to be taken back to the Aglaia, when a sudden sound caught his attention—a sound of swift steps. They came rapidly along the hurricane deck, where he himself had found footing, mounted the short stair to the texas, and the next moment the door of the pilot-house was burst ajar and the face and form of Adrian Ducie appeared at the entrance.

Floyd-Rosney staggered to his feet.

“What does this mean, sir?” he cried, thickly, the veins of his forehead swollen stiff and blue, his face scarlet, his eyes flashing fire.

The newcomer seemed surprised beyond measure. He stared at Floyd-Rosney as if doubting his senses and could not collect his thoughts or summon words until Floyd-Rosney blustered forth:

“Why this intrusion! Leave this place instantly!”

“It is no intrusion, and I will go at my own good pleasure. I came here thinking to find a man with whom I have business.”

“Well, you have found him. A business that should have been settled between us long ago!” He advanced a step, and he had his right hand in his pocket.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’ll find out, as sure as your name is Randal Ducie,” hissed Floyd-Rosney.

“That’s exactly what it is not. I am Adrian Ducie.”

“You can’t play that game with me. I know your cursed face well enough. I will mark it now, so that there will never be any more mistakes between you.”

Adrian had thought he had a pistol, but it was a knife—a large clasp knife which he had opened with difficulty because of the strength of its spring as he fumbled with it in his pocket. He thrust violently at Ducie’s face, who only avoided the blow by suddenly springing aside; the blade struck the door with such force as to shiver off a fragment of the wood.

Taken at this disadvantage it was impossible for Adrian to retreat in the precarious footing of the wreck and useless to call for help. He could only defend himself with his bare hands.

“I call you to observe, Mr. Floyd-Rosney,” he exclaimed, “that I am unarmed!”

“So much the better!” cried Floyd-Rosney, striking furiously with the knife at the face he hated with such rancor.

But this time Adrian caught at the other man’s arm to deflect the blow and there ensued a fierce struggle for the possession of the knife, the only weapon between them. While Floyd-Rosney was the heavier and the stronger of the combatants, Adrian was the more active and the quicker of resource. He had almost wrested the knife from Floyd-Rosney’s grasp; in seeking to close the blade the sharp edge was brought down on Floyd-Rosney’s hand, and the blood spurted out. The next moment he had regained it and he rushed at his adversary’s face—the point held high. Pushing him back with one hand against his breast Adrian once more deflected his aim from his eyes and face, but the point struck lower with the full force of Floyd-Rosney’s terrific lunge, piercing the throat and severing the jugular vein.