The question caught Mary all unprepared, but she retained her self-control sufficiently to make her answer in a voice that to the ordinary ear would have revealed no least tremor.

"No," she said. She offered no explanation, no excuse, merely stated the fact in all its finality.

Aggie was really shocked, though for a reason altogether sordid, not one whit romantic.

"Ain't he young?" she demanded aggressively. "Ain't he good-looking, and loose with his money something scandalous? If I met up with a fellow as liberal as him, if he was three times his age, I could simply adore him!"

It was Garson who pressed the topic with an inexorable curiosity born of his unselfish interest in the woman concerned.

"Then, why did you marry him?" he asked. The sincerity of him was excuse enough for the seeming indelicacy of the question. Besides, he felt himself somehow responsible. He had given back to her the gift of life, which she had rejected. Surely, he had the right to know the truth.

It seemed that Mary believed her confidence his due, for she told him the fact.

"I have been working and scheming for nearly a year to do it," she said, with a hardening of her face that spoke of indomitable resolve. "Now, it's done." A vindictive gleam shot from her violet eyes as she added: "It's only the beginning, too."

Garson, with the keen perspicacity that had made him a successful criminal without a single conviction to mar his record, had seized the implication in her statement, and now put it in words.

"Then, you won't leave us? We're going on as we were before?" The hint of dejection in his manner had vanished. "And you won't live with him?"

"Live with him?" Mary exclaimed emphatically. "Certainly not!"

Aggie's neatly rounded jaw dropped in a gape of surprise that was most unladylike.

"You are going to live on in this joint with us?" she questioned, aghast.

"Of course." The reply was given with the utmost of certainty.

Aggie presented the crux of the matter.

"Where will hubby live?"

There was no lessening of the bride's composure as she replied, with a little shrug.

"Anywhere but here."

Aggie suddenly giggled. To her sense of humor there was something vastly diverting in this new scheme of giving bliss to a fond husband.

"Anywhere but here," she repeated gaily. "Oh, won't that be nice--for him? Oh, yes! Oh, quite so! Oh, yes, indeed--quite so--so!"

Garson, however, was still patient in his determination to apprehend just what had come to pa.s.s.

"Does he understand the arrangement?" was his question.

"No, not yet," Mary admitted, without sign of embarra.s.sment.

"Well," Aggie said, with another giggle, "when you do get around to tell him, break it to him gently."

Garson was intently considering another phase of the situation, one suggested perhaps out of his own deeper sentiments.

"He must think a lot of you!" he said, gravely. "Don't he?"

For the first time, Mary was moved to the display of a slight confusion.

She hesitated a little before her answer, and when she spoke it was in a lower key, a little more slowly.

"I--I suppose so."

Aggie presented the truth more subtly than could have been expected from her.

"Think a lot of you? Of course he does! Thinks enough to marry you! And believe me, kid, when a man thinks enough of you to marry you, well, that's some thinking!"

Somehow, the crude expression of this professional adventuress penetrated to Mary's conscience, though it held in it the truth to which her conscience bore witness, to which she had tried to shut her ears....

And now from the man came something like a draught of elixir to her conscience--like the trump of doom to her scheme of vengeance.

Garson spoke very softly, but with an intensity that left no doubt as to the honesty of his purpose.

"I'd say, throw up the whole game and go to him, if you really care."

There fell a tense silence. It was broken by Mary herself. She spoke with a touch of haste, as if battling against some hindrance within.

"I married him to get even with his father," she said. "That's all there is to it.... By the way, I expect d.i.c.k will be here in a minute or two.

When he comes, just remember not to--enlighten him."

Aggie sniffed indignantly.

"Don't worry about me, not a mite. Whenever it's really wanted, I'm always there with a full line of that lady stuff." Thereupon, she sprang up, and proceeded to give her conception of the proper welcoming of the happy bridegroom. The performance was amusing enough in itself, but for some reason it moved neither of the two for whom it was rendered to more than perfunctory approval. The fact had no depressing effect on the performer, however, and it was only the coming of the maid that put her lively sallies to an end.

"Mr. Gilder," Fannie announced.

Mary put a question with so much of energy that Garson began finally to understand the depth of her vindictive feeling.

"Any one with him?"

"No, Miss Turner," the maid answered.

"Have him come in," Mary ordered.

Garson felt that he would be better away for the sake of the newly married pair at least, if not for his own. He made hasty excuses and went out on the heels of the maid. Aggie, however, consulting only her own wishes in the matter, had no thought of flight, and, if the truth be told, Mary was glad of the sustaining presence of another woman.

She got up slowly, and stood silent, while Aggie regarded her curiously.

Even to the insensitive observer, there was something strange in the atmosphere.... A moment later the bridegroom entered.

He was still clean-cut and wholesome. Some sons of wealthy fathers are not, after four years experience of the white lights of town. And the lines of his face were firmer, better in every way. It seemed, indeed, that here was some one of a resolute character, not to be wasted on the trivial and gross things. In an instant, he had gone to her, had caught her in his arms with, "h.e.l.lo, dear!" smothered in the kiss he implanted on her lips.

Mary strove vainly to free herself.

"Don't, oh, don't!" she gasped.

d.i.c.k Gilder released his wife from his arms and smiled the beatific smile of the newly-wed.