A tear fell on the thin hand that Magsie was patting. Through dazzled eyes she saw the future: reckless buying of gowns--brief and few farewells--the private car, the adoring invalid, the great sunny West with its forests and beaches, the plain gold ring on her little hand. In the whole concerned group--doctor, nurse, valet, mother, maid--young Mrs. Gardiner would be supreme! She saw herself flitting about a California bungalow, lending her young strength to Richie's increasing strength in the sunwashed, health- giving air.

She put her arms about him, laid her rosy cheek against his pale one.

"And you really want me to go out," Magsie began, smiling through tears, "and get a nice special license and a nice little plain gold ring and come back here with a nice kind clergyman, and say 'I will'---"

But at this her tears again interrupted her, and Richard, clinging desperately to her hand, could not speak either for tears. His mother who had silently entered the room on Magsie's last words suddenly put her fat arms about her and gave her the great motherly embrace for which, without knowing it, she had hungered for years, and they all fell to planning.

Richard could help only with an occasional a.s.sent. There was nothing to which he would not consent now. They would be married as soon as Magsie and his mother could get back with the necessities. And then would he drink his milk, good boy--and go straight to sleep, good boy. Then to-morrow he should be helped into the softest motor car procurable for money, and into the private car that his mother and Magsie meant to engage, by hook or crook, to-night. In six days they would be watching the blue Pacific, and in three weeks Richie should be sleeping out of doors and coming downstairs to meals. He had only to obey his mother; he had only to obey his wife. Magsie kissed him good-bye tenderly before leaving him for the hour's absence. Her heart was twisting little tendrils about him already. He was a sweet, patient dear, she told his mother, and he would simply have to get well!

"G.o.d above bless and reward you, Margaret!" was all Mrs. Gardiner could say, but Magsie never tired of hearing it.

When the two women went down the hospital steps they found Billy Pickering, in her large red car, eying them reproachfully from the curb.

"This is a nice way to act!" Billy began. "Your janitor's wife said you had come here. I've got two men--" Magsie's expression stopped her.

"This is Mr. Gardiner's mother, Billy," Magsie said solemnly. "The doctors agree that he must not stand this climate another day. He had another sinking spell yesterday, and he--he mustn't have another! I am going with them to California--"

"You ARE?" Billy e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in amazement. Magsie bridled in becoming importance.

"It is all very sudden," she said with the weary, patient smile of the invalid's wife, "but he won't go without me." And then, as Mrs. Gardiner began to give directions to the driver of her own car, which was waiting, she went on inconsequentially, and in a low and troubled undertone, "I didn't know what to do. Do--do you think I'm a fool, Billy?"

"But what'll the other man say?" demanded Billy.

Magsie, leaning against the door of the car, rubbed the polished wood with a filmy handkerchief.

"He won't know," she said.

"Won't know? But what will you tell him?"

"Oh, he's not here. He won't be back for ever so long. And--and Richie can't live--they all say that. So if I come back before he does, what earthly difference can it make to him that I was married to Richie?"

"MARRIED!" For once in her life Billy was completely at a loss.

"But are you going to MARRY him?"

Magsie gave her a solemn look, and nodded gravely. "He loves me,"

she said in a soft injured tone, "and I mean to take as good care of him as the best wife in the world could! I'm sick of the stage, and if anything happens with--the other, I shan't have to worry-- about money, I mean. I'm not a fool, Billy. I can't let a chance like this slip. Of course I wouldn't do it if I didn't like him and like his mother, too. And I'll bet he will get well, and I'll never come back to New York! Of course this is all a secret. We're going right down to the City Hall for the license now, and the ring---There are a lot of clothes I've got to buy immediately--"

"Why don't you let me run you about?" suggested Billy. "I don't have to meet the men until six--I'll have to round up another girl, too; but I'd love to. Let Mama go back to Mr. Gardiner!"

"Oh, I couldn't," Magsie said, quite the dutiful daughter. "She's a wonderful person; she's arranging for our own private car, and a cook, and I may take Anna if I can get her!"

"All righto!" agreed Billy.

A rather speculative look came into her face as the other car whirled away. She suddenly gave directions to the driver.

"Drive to Miss Clay's apartment, where you picked me up this morning, Hungerford!" she said quickly. "I--I think I left something there--gloves--"

"I wonder if you would let me into Miss Clay's apartment?" she said to the beaming janitor's wife fifteen minutes later. "Miss Clay isn't here, and I left my gloves in her rooms."

Something in Magsie's manner had made her feel that Magsie had good reason for keeping the name of her admirer hid. Billy had felt for weeks that she would know the name if Magsie ever divulged it. And this morning she had noticed the admission that the wronged wife was a beautiful woman--and the hesitation with which Magsie had answered "Two girls." Then Magsie had said that she would "write him," not at all the natural thing to do to a man one was sure to see, and Rachael had said that Warren was away!

But most significant of all was her answer to Billy's question as to whether the children were grown. Magsie had admitted that she knew the wife, had "known her before," and yet she pretended not to know whether or not the children were grown. Billy had had just a fleeting idea of Warren Gregory before that, but this particular term confirmed the suspicion suddenly.

So while Magsie was getting her marriage license, Billy was in Magsie's apartment turning over the contents of her wastepaper basket in feverish haste. The envelope was ruined, it had been crushed while wet; a name had been barely started anyway. But here was the precious sc.r.a.p of commencement, "My dearest Greg--"

Billy was almost terrified by the discovery. There it was, in irrefutable black and white. She stuffed it back into the basket, and left the house like a thief, panting for the open air. A suspicion only ten minutes before, now she felt as if no other fact on earth had ever so fully possessed her. For an hour she drove about in a daze. Then she went home, and sat down at her desk, and wrote the following letter:

"Mv DEAR RACHAEL: The letter with the darling little 'B' came yesterday. I think he is cute to learn to write his own letter so quickly. Tell him that mother is proud of him for picking so many blackberries, and will love the jam. It is as hot as fire here, and the park has that steamy smell that a hothouse has. I have been driving about in Joe Butler's car all afternoon. We are going to Long Beach to-night.

"Rachael--Magsie Clay and a man named Richard Gardiner were married this afternoon. He is an invalid or something; he is at St. Luke's Hospital, and she and his mother are going to take him to California at once. What do you know about that? Of course this is a secret, and for Heaven's sake, if you tell anybody this, don't say I gave it away.

"If Magsie Clay should send you a bunch of letters, she will just do it to be a devil, and I want to ask you to burn them up before you read them. You know how you talked to me about divorce, Rachael! What you don't know can't hurt you. Don't please Magsie Clay to the extent of doing exactly what she wants you to do. If anyone you love has been a fool, why, it is certainly hard to understand how they could, but you stand by what you said to me the other day, and forget it.

"I feel as if I was breaking into your own affairs. I hope you won't care, and that I'm not all in the dark about this--"

"Affectionately, BILLY."

CHAPTER VI

This letter, creased from constant reading, Rachael showed to George Valentine a week later. The doctor, who had spent the week- end with his family at Clark's Hills, was in his car and running past the gate of Home Dunes on his way back to town when Rachael stopped him. She looked her composed and dignified self in her striped blue linen and deep-brimmed hat, but the man's trained look found the circles about her wonderful eyes, and he detected signs of utter weariness in her voice.

"Read this, George," said she, resting against the door of his car, and opening the letter before him. "This came from Billy-- Mrs. Pickering, you know--several days ago."

George read the doc.u.ment through twice, then raised questioning eyes to hers, and made the mouth of a whistler.

"What do you think?" Rachael questioned in her turn.

"Lord! I don't know what to think," said George. "Do you suppose this can be true?"

Rachael sighed wearily, staring down the road under the warming leaves of the maples into a far vista of bare dunes in thinning September sunshine.

"It might be, I suppose. You can see that Billy believes it," she said.

"Sure, she believes it," George agreed. "At least, we can find out. But I don't understand it!"

"Understand it?" she echoed in rich scorn. "Who understands anything of the whole miserable business? Do I? Does Warren, do you suppose?"

"No, of course n.o.body does," George said hastily in distress. He regarded the paper almost balefully. "This is the deuce of a thing!" he said. "If she didn't care for him any more than that, what's all the fuss about? I don't believe the threat about sending his letters, anyway!" he added hardily.

"Oh, that was true enough," Rachael said lifelessly. "They came."

George gave her an alarmed glance, but did not speak.

"A great package of them came," Rachael added dully. "I didn't open it. I had a fire that morning, and I simply set it on the fire." Her voice sank, her eyes, brooding and sombre, were far away. "But I watched it burning, George," she said in a low, absent tone, "and I saw his handwriting--how well I know it-- Warren's writing, on dozens and dozens of letters--there must have been a hundred! To think of it--to think of it!"

Her voice was like some living thing writhing in anguish. George could think of nothing to say. He looked about helplessly, b.u.t.toned a glove b.u.t.ton briskly, folded the letter, and made some work of putting it away in an inside pocket.