And one or two Americans who had lived in the South of their
own country insisted that she had a "touch of the tar brush." She
confessed to having passed some years in South Africa, "in the country a
good deal of the time." And something was said by gossips who did not
know much, about a first husband who had been "a doctor in some
God-forsaken hole." Perhaps that was true, people told each other; and
if so, it explained how she and Dauntrey had met; because it was
generally understood that he had been, or tried to be, a doctor in
South Africa. Thus the story went round that he had been her late
husband's assistant, and had married her when she was free.
Even the first ten days in Monte Carlo showed Lady Dauntrey that her
brilliant scheme for the season was doomed to failure: and that heart of
hers, out of which Mrs. Collis said a whole macadamized road might be
made, grew sick with disappointment and anxiety.
She had married Dauntrey--almost forced him to marry her, in fact, by
fanning the dying embers of his chivalry--because she expected through
him to realize her ambitions. Under this motive lay another--an almost
savage love, not unlike the love for an Apache of the female of his
kind. Only, Dauntrey was not an Apache at heart, and Eve Ruthven was.
Eve, of course, was not her real name. She had been Emma Cotton until
she went on the stage twenty years ago, at sixteen; but she was the type
of woman who admires and takes the name of Eve. And Mrs.
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