Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/130

 Marjorie stopped her cab and waited until she saw that the other car halted before the hospital and the passenger got out and, evidently having told the driver to wait, went into the building. But now she did not look quite so much like Mrs. Russell.

"No," Marjorie argued with herself. "Mrs. Russell would not dare. Rinderfeld would not let her."

She had not mentioned Mrs. Russell to Rinderfeld, yet she had no doubt that he was in charge, too, of Mrs. Russell. Besides, if that woman were Mrs. Russell, what could Marjorie do? She told her driver to go on, and, returning alone to Evanston, she underwent a new emotion as she drove through wide, beautiful avenues of her neighbors' prosperous, honorable, protected homes.

Instead of experiencing merely a renewal of the dread of her neighbors, of their mercilessness if they "found out," she was swept with a sharper pang of shame for the unworthiness of her home to stand among theirs; and the conduct of her father became betrayal, not only of his family, but of all their friends. No wonder Evanston had been slow in accepting newcomers; by choosing to live in a place like Evanston, you made a more definite profession of certain ideals than by going about the business of residing in a different sort of community; you displayed at least a desire for decent, family life and for the more sober and less fleshly enjoyments. So when one did as her father had done, he harmed more than himself and his own; he took advantage of decencies and self-restraints practised by other men—restraints which had made his neighborhood attractive and desirable—and he had betrayed them.

For the moment, Marjorie ranged herself on the side of these other families which had not proved false; and