“Aunt’s not seriously ill,” said Maisie Jones.
“But I suppose her illness means that you must stay pretty close to your rooms?”
“Yes.”
“I can sympathize with you. I’m convalescing from pneumonia, and am supposed to rest the whole time. To confess the truth to you”—with a smile of guiltily humorous candor—“my real reason for bringing the letters myself was that I saw in it a few minutes’ relief from this awful boredom of getting well.”
Miss Jones hesitated. “Won’t you please come in?”
Mary entered. The rest was natural development, a development which with her skill she made rapid. She was humorously frank about herself, and from personal bits which she adroitly dropped here and there, she let Miss Jones gather that she was the daughter of a New York family who moved among the city’s smarter set, that her husband was in the far West, on business, and that the other members of the family—they were an irrational and self-centered lot—were at Florida and California resorts gratifying their various individual predilections.
Frankness begot frankness. Maisie Jones, a shut-in, was most willing to talk; but Mary, though making a show of lively interest in what was said, was shrewdly studying the girl. Maisie was strikingly handsome—a specimen of the American girl who has been through a fashionable school and then had a successful year or two in society. Mary catalogued the qualities her plans must take account of: she was spoiled, willful, proud, jealous—possibly vindictive.
This first study of Maisie completed, and the opening made for future meetings, Mary started back to her suite, thrilling with confidence. Her plan was under way! And she was going to succeed, even though she was going it alone!
But when she entered her sitting-room, she stopped short. For from a chair had risen the smiling person of Peter Loveman.
“Good-morning, my dear,” said the little lawyer.