"She would even marry him if she could dispose of Gay," he thought, and rightly, as he watched her.

As she was telling him of the head-dress party she intended to give for Gay's birthday and how he must come because she wanted him to wear a pirate turban, in came Mary, much flurried over a mistake made in a shipment, and her nose guilty of a slight but unmistakable shine.

"Oh, Trudy! Run home--your house is on fire! Your cretonnes will burn!" she said, half in earnest. "My dear child, I'm mighty busy. It is so stupid of Parker!" She turned to Steve. "He made the original error and I have to keep cross-examining everyone else to prove to him that I know he is at fault and that he must 'fess up. But he won't--people never want to say: 'Yes, it is my fault and I'm sorry,'

do they?"

"Sort of habit since the Garden of Eden, I guess--you can't expect it to change now." Steve had lost his listless air. All unconsciously he had the same animated, interested att.i.tude that he had had during the days of being engaged to the Gorgeous Girl. Trudy saw at a glance that Mary had not only realized her starved hopes but that she was quite ignorant of the fact that she had done so. To Trudy's mind it was a most stupid situation; also an inexcusable one. Here was Mary, the good-looking thing who deserved a love such as Steve O'Valley's yet never dared to hope he would ever think of her twice except if she asked for a raise in salary. This Trudy knew, also. And since it is inevitable that a cave man cannot exist on truffles, chiffon frocks that must not be rumpled, and an interior decorator with a ukulele at his beck and call, Steve had been forced into realizing Mary's worth and loving her for it, giving to her the mature and steady love of a strong man who, like Parker, had made a mistake and not yet 'fessed up. Why Mary did not realize that happiness was within her reach, and why Steve did not realize that Mary adored him, and why they were not in the throes of talking over her lawyer and my lawyer and alimony but we love each other and let the whole world go hang--was not within Trudy's jurisdiction to determine. She only knew what she would have done and be doing were she Mary--and Steve O'Valley loved her.

She felt the situation was as unforgivable and stupid as to have Gay offer her a two-carat diamond ring and to have her say: "No, Bubseley; sell it and let us use the money to start a fund for heating the huts of aged and infirm Eskimos. The Salvation Army has never dropped up that way."

The great miracle had happened. And, envying Mary a trifle and pitying Steve for not having won his cause, Trudy justified a hidden resolve of long ago: To use Mary's secret in case Beatrice became overbearing or impossible. It was mighty fine plunder, upon which she flattered herself she had a single-handed option.

So she released Steve from the agony of conversation, and watching the tender, happy look as he talked to Mary over some other detail of the cropper, she went inside to Mary's office to powder her own little nose and realize that she was no nearer to obtaining a diamond ring than when she first began to crave for one.

"I'm going to bundle you off," Mary informed her. "I really must--or was it anything special?"

It was all Trudy could do not to offer to play the confidential bosom friend and urge Mary to show Beatrice where she stood. But somehow the brisk business atmosphere, which was very real and brusque, prevented her from saying anything except that she had wanted to talk to her.

She was lonesome--she was going to come some evening and have a good, old-time visit.

"Of course--just let me know when."

"Oh"--archly--"are you busy on certain evenings?"

"Sometimes. French lessons; theatre; general odd jobs."

"No particular caller?"

"No," Mary laughed.

"I thought perhaps--you know, one time I came in and----"

"You came one time and found Mr. O'Valley," Mary hastened to add.

"Yes, I remember, but that was an unusual occurrence. He came in on business and when he discovered I did not object to a pipe--he stayed."

Trudy was disappointed. "Did Beatrice ever know?"

"Don't know myself." Mary was determined to win out. "I can't see why she should--it would not interest her. She never listens to things that do not interest her.... You won't know Luke. He grows like a weed."

Trudy found herself dismissed. She did not know just how it had come about but Mary was smiling her into the elevator and Trudy was sinking to the ground floor feeling that though it was none of her business unless she got a diamond ring she was just going to make other people unhappy, too.

Why this conclusion was reached was not at all clear to Trudy any more than to the rest of the world. But after all, it is only fair to leave something for the psychologists to debate about. At all events, it was the definite conclusion at which she arrived.

She could not resist paying a fleeting return visit to the largest of the jewellery stores. After which she told herself that it was little short of going without shoes or stockings through the streets to have been married the length of time she had been married and to possess not a single diamond.

Returning home for a canned luncheon she discovered g.a.y.l.o.r.d humming a love song and strumming on his ukulele.

"I say, old dear," he began, "I have had the greatest luck! I call it nothing short of a fairy tale." He pointed at his neckscarf. Coming near, Trudy bent over and gave way to a shrill scream. A handsome diamond pin reposed in the old-rose silk.

"Where--where did you get it?" she managed to articulate.

"Beatrice really--the result of the raffle for the children's charity.

You remember we took tickets? She donated this scarfpin, and this morning Jill Briggs came in and presented the trophy. My number was the winning one: 56."

"She made you win it. You know she did, you toadying little abomination! You fairly lick her boots--and she has to tip you occasionally. And you sit there wearing that pin and never offering to have it set in a pin for me. You dare to keep it--you dare?" She lost her self-control.

Gay sprang up in alarm, the ukulele being the only weapon handy, holding her off at arm's length. "How low!" he chattered. "How d-disgustingly low----"

"Is it? I'll show you--I'll show you whether or not you can wear diamond stickpins while I have to endure a wedding ring like a washwoman's!"

Before Gay knew what was happening Trudy had left the house. A half hour later a suave clerk's voice from the jewellery store was asking him to step down at once, his wife had requested it, she had decided on a ring for herself but wished his seal of approval--so did the store--and a small deposit--would he be able to be with them shortly?

He would, struggling with a man-size rage. After all, the little five-eighths-carat stone he had so proudly adorned his bosom with would be dearly paid for in the end. That was what came of marrying beneath him, he reproached himself as he locked up the apartment and went down to the store. To make a scene in a fifty-cent cafe was not worth the effort, Trudy had once proclaimed, but to run the gauntlet of real rough-house emotion in a jewellery store frequented by his clientele would be social suicide. The only thing was to make Beatrice pay a larger commission on the things for her new tea house so that he could pay for this red-haired vixen's ring. But this would not in the least dim the red-haired vixen's triumph, which was the issue at stake. From that moment he began really to hate Trudy.

To her amazement he greeted her in honeyed tones, approved the ring, and suggested that the wedding ring be turned in for old gold and replaced by a modern creation and so on, produced a deposit, and walked out with Trudy, who wore the new symbol of triumph on her finger, proposing that they lunch downtown. He was determined to carry it through without a moment's faltering.

Even Trudy was nonplussed. Once the treasure was secure in her possession she told herself it had been so easy that she was a fool not to have tried it before--she even complimented Gay on his scarfpin. But she began hating him also. No one would have suspected it, to watch these diamond-adorned young people guzzling crab-meat c.o.c.ktails and planning fiercer raids on Beatrice O'Valley's pocketbook.

Moreover, Trudy did not change in her decision to make someone unhappy. She found that possessing a diamond ring did not remove her discontent--and a shamed feeling stole over her, causing her to wonder how loudly she had screamed at Gay and how she must have looked when she started to strike him in her blind rage; how horrible it was to go off on tangents just because you wanted rings on your fingers and bells on your toes when all the time the world did contain such persons as Mary Faithful, who did not choose to claim a paradise which longed to be claimed.

Trudy was unable to keep her fingers out of the pie. She found herself naturally gravitating over to see Beatrice. Ostensibly she wanted to display her new ring and talk about Gay's luck and the daring gypsy embroideries he had just received from New York but really to tell her Steve O'Valley, supposedly enslaved cave man, loved another and a plainer woman than her own gorgeous self.

She found Beatrice in a neglige of delicately embroidered chiffon with luxurious black-satin flowers as a corsage. She had seldom seen her look as lovely; even the too-abundant curves of flesh were concealed behind the lace draperies. She seemed this day of days to fit into the background of the villa, as if some old master had let his most adored brain child come tripping from a tarnished frame--a little lady in old lace, as it were.

Beatrice had taken up a new activity since her father's stroke. At first the stroke had frightened, then bored, then amused her. She really liked having what she termed a "comfortable calamity" in the family. It was something so new to plan for and talk about, such a valid excuse if she did not wish to accept invitations, and an excellent reason for runaway trips to Atlantic City or New York "to get away from it all for a little--poor, dear papa."

So she sat with her father rather more than one would have expected, made him listen to opera records which drove him to distraction, talked to him of nothing, and tried to be a little sister to the afflicted in a pink-satin and cream-lace setting.

She had lost her interest in Trudy--Trudy no longer amused or frightened her. And Gay had become so useful and attentive that had the truth about the raffle been known it would be the astonishing information that as Beatrice donated the tie pin she decided she should pick the future owner--and Gay was the logical candidate to her way of thinking.

Also she was quite contented with Steve. He let her alone and he adored her--she never doubted that. He wanted her to have everything she wished--and that was the biggest, finest way to show one's love for another. It was the only way that she had ever known existed. Of course all brides have silly notions of perpetual adoration, that sort of thing, and Steve was a cave man first and last, bless his old heart, but they had pa.s.sed any mid-channel which might exist and were happy for all time to come. They seldom quarrelled, and she no longer tried to make Steve over to her liking in small ways, and he seldom offered her suggestions. Moreover, he was so good to her father--and of course everything was as it should be. It was simply the rather drab fashion in which most lives are lived, and Beatrice was quite contented. She had never gotten another toy dog, not even as a contrast to Tawny Adonis. Really, Gay answered a mult.i.tude of needs!

But Trudy was a real person--and a constant reminder of what Beatrice herself might have been, and therefore Beatrice never ceased to envy her or to picture how much better she could do were she in Trudy's place. She preferred not having her about. Besides, Trudy was impossible in Italian villas--she belonged in a near-mahogany atmosphere with cerise-silk drapes and gaudy vases. Age-old elegancies did not harmonize with her vivid self.

So she was not overly cordial in greeting Trudy. But Trudy with an eye to mischief managed to draw her little lady-in-old-lace hostess into a heart-to-heart talk. And before the afternoon ended Beatrice had experienced the first real shock of her life. Her husband smoked a pipe in Mary Faithful's living room and never told her; and Mary Faithful admitted she loved someone very much and was with him each day in business and so on; and Trudy had seen the smile pa.s.s between them which signifies the perfect understanding! And oh, she did not know a tenth of it, deary; not a tenth of it! It was one of those subtle, hidden things, nothing tangible or dreadful--like a purgatorial state of mind which may result in brimstone or lovely angels with harps. Neither could she do anything about it since they were both perfect dears and always would be. Not for worlds, in Trudy's estimation, would they ever take it upon themselves to prove the brittleness of vows.

After which Beatrice thanked Trudy, wishing her a speedy death by way of grat.i.tude, going to her room to decide what her att.i.tude should be.

To accuse Steve was crude; besides, she must be positive that it was true. To get up an affair herself would be no heart balm since she had never ceased having affairs--well-bred episodes, rather, perfectly harmless when all is said and done, quite like Steve's, for that matter! She could not find a new interest in life until she had reduced at least twenty pounds, since her dieting and exercises required all surplus will power and thought. She would go away only her plans were made for months ahead. She could not tell her father--the shock might kill him.... There was really nothing left to do but suffer--be wretched and wonder if it was true. A horrid state of uncertainty--to ask herself how it could ever have happened and what would be the end, and terrible things--just terrible things! No matter how large a check she might write to buy herself a new toy it would have no bearing whatsoever upon the matter. She wished to heaven Trudy had confined her gossip to the funny little manicure with champagne eyes who flirted with someone else's husband! This was her reward for having taken up with a shopgirl person!

The final conclusion she reached was that she did not believe a word Trudy had told her.

CHAPTER XVIII

Beatrice took occasion to go to see Mary within the next few days. In a particularly fetching costume of green satin with fly-away sleeves steadied by silver ta.s.sels and a black hat aglow with iridescent plumes she surprised Mary at an hour when Steve would be absent. On this occasion Beatrice dressed to dazzle and intimidate one of her own s.e.x. But the result was unsatisfactory. She found Mary quite pa.s.sable in cloud-blue organdie, a contented look in her gray eyes.