Trudy drew her hands away. She had caused Mary to confirm her suspicions, and she was sorry she had done so. The better part of her knew that she had been admitted into the very sanctuary of the girl's soul, and that the worst part of her, which usually dominated, was not worthy to be trusted with such a secret. She wished Mary had not said the words--since it changed everything and made a singularly pleasing weapon to use against Beatrice O'Valley should occasion rise. Mary was good--and it was safer to slander a good person than a bad one because there was less chance of a come-back. As she tried to make herself forget what she had just heard she knew that in the heat of anger or to gain some material goal she would use this effectual weapon without thinking and without remorse.

"Oh, my poor girl!" was all she said; and Mary, believing that Trudy so reverenced her secret that she was not going to stab it with clumsy words, kissed her and very practically set about getting a lunch.

Trudy went home taking some biscuit and half a cake with her, and by the time she reached the Touraine she was in a cheerful frame of mind once more. The relief of confession, the home food, and the knowledge of Mary's secret had buoyed her up past caring for or considering Gay.

To her surprise Gay was at home, jubilant and repentant. He had won at pool and had also consumed some 1879 Burgundy, which conspired to make him adore his red-haired wife and tell her that he had quite deserved and enjoyed having his face smacked.

The pool money in her safe keeping, visions of a new hat to wear at the next luncheon caused Trudy to equal his elation. Together they ate up Mary's biscuits and cake and talked about Beatrice's remodelling the Constantine mansion at the cost of many thousands.

"We could almost retire," Trudy suggested; "but I'm afraid Steve will never give his consent."

"Don't worry. Bea would never let a little thing like a husband stand in the way of her progress."

In March, just as Steve was returning, Beatrice and her aunt departed for a whirl in Florida, with a laconic invitation that Steve and his father-in-law follow them. Steve declined the invitation with alarming curtness.

Though Constantine worried in his peculiar way because Steve did not rush down to Florida to play with the rest of the snapping turtles Beatrice had about her heels he did not succeed in getting anything but a logical explanation as to a business rush from his son-in-law.

More and more Steve was being saddled with Constantine's end of the game as well as his own--and he did not know how to proceed with the double responsibility. So Constantine went to Florida alone, to find his daughter revelling in new frocks and flirtations, both of which she temporarily sidetracked while she made her father give his consent to having the house done over after the manner of a Frascati villa.

"Gad," commented her father, during the heat of the argument, "I thought you were pretty well off as you were. Will Steve like it?"

"He doesn't care what I do," she hastened to a.s.sure him. "Of course he will--he ought to--I'm paying for it. He'll have as wonderful a home as there is in the United States. Alice's will be a caricature by contrast. Gay says so. As soon as we go home I'm going to signal them to begin."

"Well, don't touch my room or I'll burn down the whole plant," her father warned. "And if I were you I'd tell Steve first--it's only right."

"But it's my money," she insisted.

"Yes, yes, I know--but you could pretend to consult him. Your mother and I never bought a toothpick that we hadn't agreed on beforehand."

"Dear old papa." She kissed him graciously by way of dismissal.

So Steve received the letter announcing the plans a few days later. It was a semi-patronizing, semi-affectionate letter with a great many underlined words and superlative adjectives and intended to convey the impression that he was a mighty lucky chap to have married a fairy princess who would spend her ducats in rigging up an uncomfortable moth-eaten villa of the days of kingdom come.

As he finished it Gay appeared, having received a letter telling him to hurry ahead with the plans and contracts. Gay was rather obsequious in his manner since he did not know whether it was Steve or Beatrice who was to pay for this transformation.

"If my wife insists, go ahead--but don't move your arts-and-crafts shop into my office. I'm not enough interested to see designs and so on. I never had time to be one of the leisure cla.s.s, and I'm too old to be kidded into thinking I'm one of them now. But I did make a mistake," he added, slowly, whether for Gay's benefit or not no one could tell--"I thought the world owed me more than a living--that it owed me a bargain. And there never was a bargain cheaply won that didn't prove a white elephant in time."

Gay's one-cylinder brain did not follow the intricacies of the statement. He merely thought of Steve in more than usually profane terms--and concluded that Beatrice was paying the bill.

CHAPTER XI

It was April before Steve found himself visiting with Mary Faithful again and admiring as heartily as Luke had admired the new apartment Mary had chosen for her family.

It had, to Steve's mind, the same delightful air of freedom and attractive shabbiness that he had come to consider as essential for a true home. While Beatrice was launched on her new object in life--making the house into a villa, from upholstering a gondola in sky-blue satin and expecting people to use it as a sofa to having the walls frescoed with fat, pouting cherubs--Mary had selected funny old chairs and soft shades of blue cretonne found in the remnant department, queer pottery, Indian blankets, and a set of blue dishes which just naturally demanded to be heaped with good things and eaten before an open fire at Sunday-night supper.

The whole expense came within Mary's economical pocketbook, yet it seemed to Steve to have the combined richness of a Persian palace and the geniality of a nursery on Christmas Eve.

He deliberately invented an excuse to call, some detail of work which, more easily than not, could have waited until the next day. He was not only using the detail of work as a means to visit Mary but as an excuse to escape a parlour lecture on "What astral vibrations does your given name bring you?" by a pale-faced young woman. The pale-faced young woman boasted of an advanced soul and was making a snug bank account from the rich set in undertaking occult a.n.a.lyses of their names by which to decide whether or not the accompanying astral vibrations harmonized with their auras; and if they did not--and were therefore detrimental and hampering to spiritual development and material progress--she would evolve occult names for them which would be sort of spiritual bits of cheese in material mousetraps baiting and capturing all the good things of this world and the next.

Convinced that Beatrice was not the proper name for her the Gorgeous Girl had ordered a chart of cabalistic signs and mystical statements, the sum total of which was that Radia was the name the astral forces wished her to be called, and by using this name she would develop into a wonderful medium. She paid fifty dollars to discover that she ought to be called Radia and that her aura was of smoky lavender, denoting an advanced soul--according to the pale-faced young woman, who had tired of teaching nonsensical flappers, had no chance to marry, and had hit upon this as her means of painlessly extracting a little _joie de vie_.

Declining to learn his astral name Steve left g.a.y.l.o.r.d to mop up the astral vibrations. Beatrice did not mind his absence though he neglected to say that the work was to be done at Miss Faithful's apartment and not at the office. Never having questioned Steve in such details Beatrice merely murmured inwardly that goat tending in one's past strangely enough led to pigheadedness in later life. It was a relief to have him away, for if drawn into an argument he still thumped his fists. For everyday living Beatrice preferred her own pet robins and angel-ducks, as she called the boys of the younger set, who flocked to flirt with her because she was extremely rich and pretty and they were in no danger of being matrimonially entangled.

Of course g.a.y.l.o.r.d ate up this occult-name affair. It was discovered that g.a.y.l.o.r.d's was a most hampering name and had his parents only consulted the stars and named him Scintar--who knows to what heights he might not have risen? Trudy's astral t.i.tle should have been Urcia, which she now adopted, blushing deeply as she recalled the vulgar Babseley and Bubseley of former days. But when Aunt Belle was informed that Cinil was the cognomen needed to make her discover an Indian-summer millionaire waiting to bestow his heart upon her Mark Constantine had packed his bags and departed unceremoniously for Hot Springs.

Meantime, Mary did not know just how to treat this imperious lonesome young man who came boldly into her household without apology or warning.

"You don't know how often I've wanted to come and see you," he said, unashamedly, delighted that Luke was out of the way and he could play in his fashion the same as Beatrice did in hers. "It isn't business, really. I just wanted to talk to you. You a.s.sume so much formality at the office that though I admit it may be wise I miss the real you."

"You mean you just trumped up an excuse----"

Then Mary began to laugh.

"I do. The DeGraff muddle can wait. It's nice to be able just to sprawl about--sprawl in a comfortable old chair. I like this little room. We are being turned into an Italian villa, you know. I don't quite see how I'll ever live up to it." As he spoke he took out a plebeian tobacco pouch and a nondescript pipe. "May I?"

"Do! Only you ought not to be here at all"--trying to be severe, and failing.

"Why not?"

"Because you think only of yourself and of what you wish," she surprised him by answering. "Why not think of the other chap occasionally?"

He paused in the lighting of his pipe. "Oh--you mean my coming here."

He looked like an unjustly punished child without redress. "You mean to consign me to the gloom of the grill room or one of those slippery leather chairs in a far corner of the club? Come, you can't say that.

I won't listen if you do. I just want to be friends with someone."

With unsuspected coquetry she suggested: "Why not your wife?"

"We're not friends--merely married." He lit his pipe and flipped the match away. "Cheap to say, isn't it? Don't look at me like that; you make me quite conscience-stricken. You seem to be aiming at me as directly as a small boy aims his s...o...b..ll. Why?"

"It wouldn't do the slightest good to tell you what I think."

"Yes, it would; someone must tell me. I've never been as lonesome in my life as now--when I'm a rich man and the husband of a very lovely woman. It sort of chills me to the marrow at first thought. I've been in a delirium, quite irresponsible. These last few months I've been coming down to earth. Only instead of getting my feet planted firmly on the sod I think I've struck a quicksand bed. I say, lend us a hand."

"Why ask me?"

"I don't just know. I don't think I shall ever be quite so sure of anything again. After all, a person has just so much capacity for joy and sorrow, and so much energy, and so much will power, allotted at birth; and if he chooses to go burn it all up in one fell swoop doing one thing--he is at liberty to do so; but he is not given any second helping. Isn't that true? Quite a terrible thing to realize when you know you used up your joy allotment in antic.i.p.ation--and it has been so much keener and finer than any of the realization. And all my energy went into making money the easiest way I could; but it does not pay."

Mary clasped her hands tightly in her lap; she was afraid to let him see her joy at the long-awaited confession.

"Yet you ask me, a reliable machine, to help you in your perplexities?"

"I don't think of you as a capable machine any more. I used to, that is true enough. I didn't know or care whether your hair was red or your eyes green--but I know now that you have gray eyes, and----"

"You really want to know my opinions?" she interrupted, breathlessly.