Up in her apartment Mary considered the matter of this money. Mr. Morton, she perceived, was playing the game as he saw it; and for the present, she decided, she must seemingly play the game in the same way. She returned the notes into the envelope, and slipped the packet into a drawer of her desk.
She thought over her situation as a whole for a few minutes. Her original plan involving Maisie Jones would have been difficult enough had she been permitted the few days on which she had counted in which to work it out uninterrupted, but this prompt injection of Loveman, and then of Morton, into her scheme, doubled the number of human objects which she must juggle without a slip. The situation was difficult, yes,—it would require the sharpest alertness of all her wits,—but she could do it!
Mary composed herself and went in again to see Maisie Jones, on whom she had promised to call after she had lunched. While they chatted Mary studied the girl with new intentness, dropping in adroit questions which would bring out revealing remarks. Instinctively she despised this daughter of plutocracy: a fluffy blonde, who had had every good thing in life served to her, unasked for, upon a golden platter, who had never once had to think for herself. She deserved just what was being planned for her! But despite Mary’s scorn—which was, perhaps, composed in part of that hate which human nature feels toward its contemplated victim—Mary perceived that beneath the girl’s fluffy worldliness, she was fundamentally the sort of girl who develops into a woman whose life is centered upon her domestic affairs and domestic happiness—who demands and subsists upon loyalty. And Mary now knew enough of Jack to know what Jack, with his instability of purpose and affection, would in the years to come bring into the life of this girl.
Again, as in the morning, Mary one by one drew out the other qualities that lay beneath Maisie’s girlish charm. She was spoiled, selfish, full of temper, vindictive—and also she was proud to the last degree, and she seemed inflexibly a Puritan in mind and impulses. It was upon the last two qualities, of pride and inflexible Puritanism, that Mary’s quick mind based her now swiftly maturing plan.
Presently Mary, in her rôle of a member of the smarter New York set, brought her light, humorously cynical talk about to some of the men she knew—to rumors of their none too circumspect amours; and then, quite casually, she mentioned Jack Morton.
“You know Jack Morton?” Maisie Jones asked.
“I’ve met him—yes.”
There was a quick flash of jealousy in the blue eyes. “I happen to know him, too,—a little. Is he—is he like those other men you spoke of?”
“You mean in regard to women?”
“Yes.”