"I'd better not go into details. He played several questionable pranks. Once, it looked as though he were on the point of seizing Mazie by her locks and dragging her, stone-man fashion, to his lair. Even Mazie had to act then, really to act, for she was after bigger game."
"You mean, Claude?"
"Yes. But Claude had no eyes for the woman of all time. His gaze was absolutely absorbed by a new star of the first magnitude, a star not charted in the heavens before."
"And this starry wonder?"
"Was Janet Barr."
He tried to say the name casually, but Cornelia's jealous ear detected a caressing tone.
"Hard on Mazie, wasn't it?" he pursued.
"On Mazie least of all," she said pointedly.
The shaft missed.
"Yes, Burley got the worst end of it," he went on innocently. "I dare say Mazie consoled herself easily enough. But Burley's aspirations have met more than one jolt to-night. When he made a dead set at Janet—that was another rebuff."