He was subconsciously aware that Loveman’s round eyes were fixed upon him sharply, and he was subconsciously aware that the keen brain behind that round face was working swiftly, ranging in every direction. But without looking at Loveman again, or speaking to him, he rose heavily and went down the broad marble stairway, muted with rugs, out into the winter twilight. These questions that engaged his mind were none of his affair. Mary Regan, as far as she touched his personal life, was now become an episode that was closed. He had other affairs to fill his life; he must turn himself to them.
And yet, as he walked away ... he wondered....
CHAPTER X
THE GOLDEN DOORS
The hour was eleven-thirty of that same night. Clifford sat in the Gold Room at the Grantham, and kept a careful eye upon the proceedings across the great room at the little corner table known among the waiters as “Mr. Loveman’s table.”
Clifford watched many persons speak briefly to Loveman. He tried to guess what the shrewd little lawyer might now be up to. Among those who came to Loveman’s table he particularly noted a dark, perfectly tailored young man, of perhaps thirty, with the lithe slenderness of the expert dancing male. Clifford knew him by name and reputation, and already he had set him down as one he must watch, together with Loveman and Bradley.
But for all his efforts to concentrate upon his present business, Clifford’s mind kept shifting back to Mary Regan. It was a most difficult situation which she had taken upon herself: the daughter of one famous criminal, the niece of another, the sister of another, and herself a former participant in criminal acts—secretly married to a rich young man who knew nothing of her past, and who was dependent upon the approval of an autocratic father. To succeed in the soaring worldly plans she had admitted to him with such cold frankness would require marvelous skill, marvelous daring, marvelous self-control. Well—skill, daring, control, she had them!
But there was Loveman to be considered. Clifford asked himself if he had deduced aright Loveman’s plans concerning her? Loveman’s words, spoken in the early hours of that morning, and spoken with mockery glinting through his habitual amiability of manner, came back to him: “Just supposing I do have any little plan under way, Clifford, I wonder how close you’ve come to guessing it? Now, I wonder?”
Looking over at the cherubic face of the shrewd little lawyer, Clifford felt for the moment all the doubt that these words had been intended to arouse. Had he, perhaps, guessed only a part of Loveman’s plan?—or was he altogether wrong?
And Clifford’s restless mind flashed to his last act in the destiny of Mary Regan: the extreme measure he had resorted to in taunting her into that impulsive marriage with Jack Morton; and then his telling her with almost brutal directness, during the brief moment just before she and Jack had motored off, that he had come to realize that only going her own worldly way, only the experience of life, could avail to awaken the real woman that was in her.
He wondered. But only time, as it unrolled its film of unborn events, could answer these questions. He could now do no more than hope the best results for Mary Regan—wherever she might be.