Margie's venture

by Mary E. Ropes

"That detestable little minx upstairs," replied Mabel, with vindictive emphasis.

"If you mean Margery Grayling, I never see her nowadays," said Nicholas lazily. "More's the pity, for it's refreshing now and again to meet a modest lass who doesn't throw herself at a man's head, but gives him 'what-for' when he tries it on with her. I shall never forget," he went on, with more enthusiasm than one might have expected from him, "how fine she looked that day in her workroom, when she told me to get out, and I wouldn't. I tell you, Mab, I couldn't help thinking that a girl with that proper pride and dignity about her would be worth winning, however hard to be won she might be. A man values what he has to work for."

Nicholas Beach was smoking while he talked, puffing curling wreaths between the sentences, and dreamily watching them as they dispersed. Had he been looking at Mab's handsome face, he would have seen the very spirit of hate and menace flashing out from the depths of her glorious eyes and setting in hard lines the curves of that beautiful red mouth. But she made no reply; nor did she offer to kiss him as she said good-night, but merely gave him a nod as cool as his own, ere she went upstairs.

Margery slept in a little room leading out of Clara's, so her own bedchamber—used also as a workroom—was now left unoccupied, and there was no one on the same storey with Mabel, except the occupants of the distant east wing.

For a while that night, Mabel sat on the side of her bed thinking. At first her feelings were too chaotic and stormy for her thoughts to shape any definite plan.

"If I could kill that girl, I would!" she said to herself; but she knew that, strong and murderous though her hate might be, to wreak it thus would only be to separate herself from Nicholas for ever. "I can't kill her, so she must go," she said. "She must go away from this place, and with such a stain on her character that Nick will never think of her again, unless with disgust. But how am I to get her off?—That's the point! They're all so insanely fond of her. There must be very clear proof that she is unprincipled, or Aunt and Clara will never part with her."

At last, with a start, her resolution was taken. She went to her dressing-table, and, opening her jewel-case, took out a handsome diamond ring. This she wrapped up in a bit of tissue paper, and taking the little parcel in her hand, she walked across the corridor to Margie's room, which was empty now, and the door standing open.

Mabel stole in. There was light enough, from a lamp outside, to see things pretty clearly. Close by the window, opposite to the door, was Margie's table with her work-box, her little writing-desk, and a pile of sewing and mending neatly folded up, beside it. Mabel stole across the floor, looking about her in a furtive, stealthy way, till she spied the desk on the table. She opened this, slipped the tiny parcel into a corner, under a packet of envelopes, where it was quite hidden, and softly shut the lid of the desk. Then, all of a sudden, the demon of jealousy seized her again, and she began wondering whether there had not, perhaps, been some secret correspondence between Margie and Nicholas.

In the little letter-stand near was a bundle of letters tied up with ribbon. She was about to put this into her pocket to take away and examine, when she fancied she heard a slight sound, which might have been the closing of some door, and, fearful of being discovered, Mabel replaced the letters, stole out, and, after a long look up and down the corridor, she returned to her own room, closed and locked her door, and proceeded to undress, well satisfied that at all events her principal object was attained.

But the best laid plans are often defeated by what we are accustomed to call an accident, forgetting that in the universe of the Almighty's plans, accidents and things of chance have no place. That night Clara turned faint, as she sometimes did after a day of unusual pain, and Margie, finding the eau de Cologne bottle empty, remembered that there was one half full on her own dressing-table. Knowing that Mabel occupied the only other chamber opening on the corridor, and fearing to disturb her in her slumber, Margie trod the passage very softly on tiptoe, and was just about to enter her own room, when she saw, outlined against the light from the window, the tall form of Mabel Raye, with one hand holding up the lid of the desk, while with the other she slipped the packet into it.