Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

"If you get a big pearl like Sard's, I'll love you—all my life," she said softly. Minga was trying the little iridescent antennæ with which a woman tests the toughness of a man's surface, but something genuine stirred in her, and when the great lawyer turned to look more closely into her face she had the grace to wince a little.

"That's an engagement ring you wear, isn't it?" Watts asked cheerfully. "Some nice little cub spending his lunch money on flowers and candy for you."

Minga tried to blush, but the time-honored suffusion somehow would not work; the girl's own consciousness, her involuntary registry as of something "wrong with the mechanism" did not escape the lawyer; he threw back his head and the forest rang with his glee.

"No, that's something you've lost, you modern girls, you don't know how to blush. It was a wonderful thing your mothers laid up just the way they used to store up old wine, and it worked. Ye Gods! how it worked! But you—a little bit too much soul-enamel, Mademoiselle, to say nothing of these other things you put on your lovely little faces."

Minga bent her head; if she couldn't blush she could, at least, simulate shyness, and girls who hope to be moving-picture actresses know how to simulate most things; many of them are perfectly satisfied with simulation for reality. Shipman went on teasing about the engagement ring. "Tawny Troop," said he, "was a very good name, an excellent name, something like a wandering singer, didn't Minga think, or an acrobat; and did the good Tawny make enough money to support a wife?"

"His father is a big motion picture producer," said Minga with dignity. She became calm and explanatory, "and he dances my line of dancing. I work up my line, you know, and so to keep him from the other girls I am engaged to him; but we don't either of us want to make it public," said Minga; "we know too much of life," with a world-wearied air. "I think one should be sure of a person, don't you? But Tawny is a good dancer," and, with an indescribable complacence, "this is a rather nice ring."

"I shall congratulate the son of the Producer," said Watts mockingly. "Does Prince Tawny go so far as to plan to produce anything himself? By Jove! Here's your big pearl, a hummer! Well, now," the lawyer was triumphant, "I've made good, anyway."

But an older man attracted for a moment by a vivid little face always makes the mistake of speaking to depths that do not exist behind that face while he blunders on little vanities that do exist. Watts had seemed too irreverent about the engagement. He had not treated Minga as a valuable person to envy another man the possession of; this by all the books and plays that Minga knew anything about, was the proper way to treat an engaged girl—there must be envy from both men and women, heart-burning and backbiting jealousies, else why be engaged? As the lawyer practically cut the pearl out of its bed, washed it and with a mock ceremonious bow handed it to her with the disrespectful suggestion: "My wedding present," Minga tingled in a way that he had made her tingle before. With a slight, bored gesture, the girl took the tiny treasure, held it a moment in her hand, then with a sudden curl of the lip, and an unlovely mocking in the eyes tossed it far from her, back into the forest. Minga stood there smiling at the man who had given it to her. She had a look of diablerie older than the history of woman.

"Why, you little——" for a moment the dark brows beetled, then Shipman laughed, while Minga stared insolently into his face. She glanced over her shoulder.