His answer was effective. He swore a splendid, soul-easing oath, adding:
"Dodo, if ever I'm fool enough to believe you, I deserve all I get!"
She laughed through the tears which had come naturally.
"So that's all you'll tell me!" he said roughly.
"Oh, there's always some truth in what I tell you!" she answered; and she had so entered into the part, so completely dramatized herself, that all that day he could not succeed in drawing her back to plain matter-of-fact.
But, despite all the good humor he put to her caprices, the determination to plague him always returned to her in some animal revulsion on leaving Lindaberry. No sooner had she left this quieter self that she found herself seized by the need of violent reaction, to which Massingale did not always suffice. Consequently she gave more time and more opportunity to Sassoon than she ordinarily would have done in prudence. But Sassoon, as though the lion had clipped his claws, never made the slightest attempt to presume, acting mildness and docility. She even began to consider him as rather a safe person, who could always, in the last test, be found manageable—which was exactly what Albert Edward Sassoon had planned. Next mutually to provoke Judge Massingale and Harrigan Blood, she persuaded them to lunch en trois. The alacrity with which Massingale (who, since the unexplained ring, was suspicious of Blood) agreed where she expected resistance, drove her to too overt a display of interest before Harrigan Blood, with his keen vindictive eyes.
This luncheon, the result of one of those unreflecting impulses which seem so casual at the time, was destined to have the gravest consequences. Harrigan Blood, suddenly enlightened as to the true state of Dodo's interests, perceived that the ruinous quarrel with Sassoon had been to no end, and disillusioned and duped, became a bitter enemy of Massingale's: for Blood, with all his idealism in the domain of ideas, was capable of petty and terrible vindictiveness when his desires were once aroused. This luncheon, in fact, cost Massingale a career.
But Dodo, having thus roused Harrigan Blood to an extent to which she little guessed, turned the tables on Massingale, who, claimed by the afternoon session, was forced to hand her over to the escort of Harrigan Blood and see them depart in the intimacy of a closed automobile.
"Thanks! now I know who is my rival!" said Harrigan Blood immediately.
"You think so?"