IN WHICH CONSTANCE AVAILS HERSELF OF WOMAN'S PRIVILEGE TO CHANGE HER MIND

Polly Parsons burst into the boudoir of Constance Joy, every feather on her lavender hat aquiver with indignation. "What do you think!" she demanded. "Johnny Gamble's lost his million dollars!"

Constance, nursing a pale-faced headache, had been reclining on the couch at the side of a bouquet of roses four feet across; but now she sat straight up and smiled, and the sparkle which had been absent for days came back into her eyes.

"No!" she exclaimed. "Really, has he?"

Polly regarded her in amazement. "You act as if you are glad of it,"

she said.

"I am," confessed Constance, and breaking off one of the big red roses she rose, surveyed herself in the gla.s.s, tried the effect of it against her dark hair and finally pinned it on her dressing-gown.

Polly plumped into a big rocking-chair to vent her indignation.

"I don't see anything to giggle at!" she declared. "Johnny Gamble's a friend of mine. I'm going home."

"Don't, Polly," laughed Constance. "Why, this is one of Johnny's roses;" and she gave it an extra touch--really a quite affectionate one.

"I'm all mussed up in my mind," complained Polly in a maze of perplexity. "Johnny Gamble made a million dollars so he could ask you to throw away your million and marry him, and you were so tickled with the idea that you kept score for him."

Constance smiled irritatingly.

"I kept score because it was fun. He never told me why he wanted the money."

"You may look like an innocent kid, but you knew that much," accused Polly.

Constance flushed, but she sat down by Polly to laugh.

"To tell you the truth, Polly, I did suspect it," she admitted.

"Yes, and you liked it," a.s.serted Polly.

Constance flushed a little more deeply.

"It was flattering," she acknowledged, "but really, Polly, it brought me into a most humiliating position. At the Courtneys' house-party I overheard Mr. Courtney tell his wife that Mr. Gamble was making a million dollars in order to marry me; and Johnny was with me at the time!"

The hint of a twinkle appeared in Polly's indignant eyes as she began to comprehend the true state of affairs.

"Suppose he did?" she demanded. "Everybody knew it."

Constance immediately took possession of the indignation and made it her own.

"They had no business to know it!"

Polly smiled.

"Every place I went that day I heard the same thing," continued Constance much aggrieved--"Johnny Gamble's million, and me, and Gresham, and the million dollars I would have to forfeit if I didn't marry Paul. It was million, million, wherever I turned!"

"The million-dollar bride," laughed Polly.

"Don't!" cried Constance. "Please don't, Polly! You've done quite enough. Even you came to me out there that day to tell me that now Johnny had made his million and was coming to propose to me. Why, you knew it before I did."

"I'm sorry I found it out," apologized Polly. "I got it from Loring."

"Why didn't you say that it was Loring who told you?" demanded Constance, disposed now to be indignant at everything.

"I didn't know you were jealous," retorted Polly.

"Jealous!" exclaimed Constance. "Why, Johnny wasn't even civil to any other girl."

Polly smiled knowingly.

"Then why did you quarrel with him?"

"I didn't," denied Constance. "He came the minute you left and I'd have screamed if he had proposed then, so I went away. He dropped his straw hat, and it rolled after me and nearly touched me. He dropped it every time I saw him that day. Also he added the final indignity--I overheard him tell Mr. Courtney that he intended to marry me whether I liked it or not. Now, Polly, seriously, what would you have done if anything like that had happened to you?"

Polly waited to gain her self-control.

"I'd have taken the hat away from him," she declared.

Constance sailed once more.

"I didn't think of that," she admitted.

"No, and instead here's what you've done," Polly pointed out to her: "You turned Johnny loose to look after himself, and he isn't capable of it since he fell in love; so for the last two weeks he's been as savage as any ordinary business man. That's one thing. For another, you've made yourself sick just pining and grieving for a sight of Johnny Gamble."

"I haven't!" indignantly denied Constance, and to prove that a.s.sertion her eyes filled with tears. She covered them with her handkerchief and Polly petted her, and they both felt better. "I think I'll dress,"

declared Constance after she had been thus refreshed. "My headache's much improved and I think I'd like to go somewhere." She hesitated a moment.

"You know everybody was to have gathered here to join Courtney's Decoration Day party this afternoon," she added.

"Yes, I remember that," retorted Polly, "but I didn't like to rub it in. Shall I call up everybody and tell them it's on again?"

"Please," implored Constance, "and, Polly--"

"Yes?"

"Tell Johnny to bring his Baltimore straw hat."

While Polly was trying to get his number, Johnny Gamble sat face to face with his old partner.

"You have your nerve to come to me," he said, as the eyebrowless young man sat himself comfortably in Johnny's favorite leather arm-chair.

"There's n.o.body else to go to," explained Collaton, with an attempt at jauntiness. "I'm dead broke, and if I don't have two thousand dollars to-morrow I'll quite likely be pinched."

"I'm jealous," stated Johnny. "I had intended to do it myself."