CHAPTER XII
A TRIBUTE
“But what could Mary mean?”
This question, or at least some variation of it had been Gloria’s plaint for the better part of a half hour, and Trixy, still patient, offered another suggestion in answer.
“There is something strange about Mary,” she said this time. “I thought I noticed it first when she caught a glimpse of a family picture in Jack’s room. It might have been imagination, we were all under such a strain, but it seemed to me her pale face betrayed sudden alarm.”
“A picture!”
“Yes. Just a rustic snapshot taken somewhere in the mountains. The stepmother, father and a couple of queer looking folks. I didn’t scrutinize it but Mary took it to the light when she thought or appeared to think no one noticed. She had some motive for studying the picture.”
“Did she say anything about it?”
“Asked me if I knew who were in the group. Jack was dozing and Miss Taylor hovered near.”
“I thought I had a first rate mystery in the Pirate’s Daughter, with her blood stone and the gift of black pearls, but now here comes Mary moping along, with regular melodrama. Trixy, the plot—thick-ens! Am I or am I not the gurrull from Barbend?” Gloria rolled down on the floor and kept rolling until the legs of the table stopped her. Then she lay flat, arms out straight and eyes closed. Trixy dropped a chocolate drop so near the receptive mouth it eventually rolled in.
“Oh, lovely-kins!” said the girl on the floor. “Why did I ever promise Dame Ambition that I’d try for that old prize? I feel like sleeping until the crack of doom.”