CHAPTER XIV
MARISE PUTS ON BLACK
A girl in love with one man, flinging herself at the head of another out of pique or something worse, should have been utterly careless how she appeared to the eyes of the latter. But for some reason—she hardly knew what—Marise had been anxious to look her most desirable. She was dressed in black velvet with shimmering fringes, and a drooping black velvet hat which made her fairness dazzling, her yellowish-brown hair bright gold.
With a faint smile, and in silence, she held out her hand. Garth took it, and this time didn't crush it unduly.
Zélie, who had risen as Garth rose, began pinning on her toque, but Marise turned to her. "Don't go, Miss Marks," she said. "I've told you the secret, and maybe we shall need your help about something. I don't want my mother here till everything's arranged. It doesn't matter about you."
Zélie slowly took out a hatpin. Oh no, it didn't matter about her! She laid the toque down again, but drew a chair to the typewriter table, her back turned to the man and the girl. She could, if she glanced up from her papers, however, see them both in a mirror. She tried not to glance up, but she succeeded about half as often as she failed. The look on Garth's face hurt a great deal worse than the hatpin had done when just now she had jammed the point of it into her head. Oh, it was ridiculous—or heartbreaking—the way some men loved the wrong girls!
"I've been thinking in the night," said Marise in a brisk, cheerful tone, "what fun for us—since we are to be married—to get married at once and give everyone we know the surprise of their young lives!... What do you say?"
Garth had not expected this at all. In fact, when he'd been sent for at a very early hour, he expected to hear that Marise had "changed her mind." It was easy for her to ask "what he said," knowing that he could say only commonplaces before Zélie Marks; and he believed that Zélie had been invited to remain in the room for precisely this reason.
"I say, 'Great!'" He rose to the occasion, with the memory of Zélie's words and his own drumming through his head. "They despise you. Cad: bounder: lout!" "That's nice of you!—very!" cooed Marise, noticing how his jaw squared, and feeling the tide of her curiosity rise. (Was it love? Or was it the million?) "Well then, we'll just do the deed! How long does it take to get licenses and things?"
Garth kept himself firmly in hand. "Only as long as it takes to buy the license and notify a parson."