Andrew Barham went off to his own rooms to think it all out.
He had a small library of his own, quite apart from the great book-lined place Madeleine called the Library, and here he went and locked himself in, bidding his servants refuse him to all comers.
What should he do—what could he do, regarding several great and important issues.
Perhaps the first was his mother-in-law.
But that he soon settled. He would let her be the unquestioned head of the house, so far as management and home rule were concerned.
Then, if her irritable temper and unpleasant disposition made him too uncomfortable, he would go away either permanently or for long temporary journeys. It was a little hard to be pushed out of his own home, but his loyalty to his dead wife and his sense of duty to her mother made no other plans possible.
Next—he must clear up this business of Maddy’s wrong doing. He didn’t know exactly what it was that people meant by their veiled innuendoes, but he proposed to find out.
Then there was that matter of the Thomas Locke studio to be taken up. What he should do regarding that, he hadn’t decided. It would take a good bit of thinking.
He wondered if the police would ever track down Locke. If the artist would ever be brought to book and asked concerning his acquaintance with the wife of Andrew Barham. And if so, he wondered what Locke would say.
As Madeleine had said, Drew was always wondering.
And he sat now, in deep thought, his mind racing from Marcia Selden to Thomas Locke: from Madeleine to—well, to himself, Andrew Barham—who, after all, was the biggest factor in his wonderings.
