The Salt Of The Earth by Fred M. White

After dinner the smoke of cigarettes began to drift across the table, and Adela and her companions were in the drawing-room. She would have given much to be alone, to think this matter out. Even as she sat smiling and chatting, her words were spoken almost mechanically, and she had little idea of what she was saying. For she had taken the plunge. She had permitted this hideous fraud to pass, and, morally speaking, was part and parcel of it. She had been swept off her feet by the resistless tide of events, and felt that a cruel fate had been altogether too much for her. But, then, what could she have done? She could not have risen to her feet directly Samuel Burton appeared and denounced him as a criminal, a man who had not earned an honest penny for twenty years. Besides, the man had been kind to her, extravagantly, grotesquely kind. She was no relation of his, she had no claim upon his purse, she was merely the daughter of a notorious woman, whose name had once been a by-word in American drinking saloons. And this Samuel Burton had chosen to make her the centre of the one romance in his life. For twenty years he had lavished money upon her, and surrounded her with every luxury. He had worked and slaved for her till her position had become unassailable. Yet if these women knew, oh, it they only knew!

What would they say? What would they think? At least half a score of women around her were known to some of the greatest in the land, and were familiar with the atmosphere of Courts. But if one might read their secret hearts, perhaps they might be no better or worse than Adela herself. Still, they were the smartest of the smart. Their sole object of idolatry was Money wherewith to procure the luxury and extravagance upon which their whole souls were centred. That was why they were making all this fuss of Adela, why they were descanting on Samuel Burton's fortune, and speculating about its amount. In imagination they were already making the millions fly.