"It is my purpose to demand proof," interrupted Marjorie with open sarcasm. "I am not untruthful, malicious or treacherous. I do not propose to allow anyone to accuse me of such things. I——"
"Be silent!" The Scarlet Mask had evidently lost temper. The command was roared out in a voice that sounded perilously like that of Leslie Cairns.
Marjorie gave a little amused laugh. She stared straight at the red mask with tantalizing eyes. "Were you speaking to me?" she inquired with a cool discomfiting sweetness that made the eyes looking into hers snap.
"Prisoner, you are insolent." The red mask was careful this time to speak in the earlier hoarse disguised voice.
"I mean to be. It is time to end this farce, I think. So far as treachery, malice and truth are concerned you, not I," Marjorie swept the tense, listening group with an inclusive gesture, "are guilty. Some one of you deliberately wrote me a lying note in order to get me here. Now I am here, but your whole scheme has fallen flat because I am not afraid. You thought I would be. I will say again what I said to a number of you on the campus last March: How silly you are!"
CHAPTER XXI.
LOOKOUTS REAL AND TRUE.
While Marjorie had gone on to the reception a la masque which had been prepared for her, Jerry had donned her infant costume in a far from happy humor. She could not get over her feeling of resentment against Anna Towne, though she knew it was hardly just. Twice during the progress of her dressing she picked up the note from the chiffonier and re-read it with knitted brows. There was something in the assured style of it that went against the grain.