Floyd-Rosney had expected that the restoration of the child to the mother would effect an immediate reconciliation with his wife. Therefore, he attained a serenity, a renewal of self-confidence which he had not enjoyed since the humiliating _contretemps_ at Union Station. In the dismissal of his bill for divorce--the _retraxit_ craftily worded and expressing with a dignity that might have seemed impossible under the circumstances his contrition for the hasty and offensive assumptions of his mistake, a sweeping recantation of all his charges and a complete endorsement of his wife’s actions in every relation of life,--he considered he had offered her an ample apology for his conduct and had held out a very alluring olive branch. He had a relish, too, of the surprise he had planned, partly to avoid a more personal method to court her forgiveness, in sending the child in charge of her favorite servant, old Aunt Dorothy, to alight unheralded from the train at Ingleside. He imagined her delight and gratitude and awaited, in smiling anticipation, altogether devoid of anxiety, her ebullient letter, brimming with thanks and endearments, and taking the blame, as she was wont to do in their differences, in that she had so misunderstood him and precipitated this series of perverse happenings that had exposed him to such cruel public misconstruction.
He began to frown when the mail was brought in, and to sort the missives with a hasty touch for something that he did not find. The servants, always on the alert to observe, and agog about the successive phases of the scandal which they had witnessed at such close quarters, collogued over the fact that he laid the rest of the mail aside unopened for hours, while he sat with a clouded brow and a reflective, unnoting eye in glum silence, unsolaced even by a cigar. It was not good to speak to him at these crises, and the house was as still as a tomb.
Floyd-Rosney’s ascendency in life had been so great, so fostered by his many worldly advantages, that he could make no compact with denial, defeat. He had not yet reached the point where he could write to his wife and beg her forgiveness, or even reproach her with her agency in the disasters that had whelmed their domestic life in this unseemly publicity. He developed an ingenuity in devising reasons for her silence. She was too proud; he had let her have her head too long. She would not write--she would not verbally admit that she condoned his odious charges, which he often declared he had a right to make, if he were to believe the testimony of his eyes, witnessing her flight with her old lover, Randal Ducie, as he was convinced, boarding the train together. She would simply return unheralded, unexplained,--and that was best! He had himself inaugurated this method in restoring the child without a word. It was a subject that could not be discussed between them, with all its sensitive nerves, with its open wounds quivering with anguished tremors. No! She would come to her home, her hearthstone, her husband, as she had every right to do, even paying all tribute to her pride, to her sense of insulted delicacy. He saw to it that the papers containing the text of his full retraction and explanation of the circumstances were mailed to her, and then adjusted himself anew to waiting and anticipation.