[CHAPTER VI]
THE girl stood in the doorway, her eyes flashing like blue flames, her delicate profile outlined against the rich portier, chin lifted, in scorn, the light catching the glint of the waves in her pretty hair and turning them into gold, the delicate blue of her silk kimono bringing out the pearly tint of her skin, a haughty little patrician, insolent in her loveliness.
Mary Dunlap looked at her in pity, and admiration, and a rising wonder. Was this the girl who had melted to tears in her arms but a few nights before, and implored her to protect her? How lovely she was even in her frenzy. She made a picture as she stood there in her rightful background. Poor, misguided infant! What a hard road she had set her feet to travel, and how soon she must come to humiliation.
But the mother was shocked into severity. "Marguerite!" she said, sitting bolt upright and looking at her daughter sternly, as she had not looked at nor spoken to her since she was a very little girl, "Marguerite! You forget yourself! You are beside yourself. Apologize at once to Mrs. Dunlap. You do not know what you are doing! Mrs. Dunlap is the best friend you have in this world. She has gone to great inconvenience and expense and trouble to save you from an awful calamity!"
The Marguerite of a few days ago would have been crushed to earth by such words from her beloved mother. Not so the girl of that night. She did not even wince. Instead she drew herself up to her full height and looked her mother steadily in the eyes, as if their ages had been reversed, and spoke with a certain air of authority that was almost startling.
"No, I am not beside myself, Mother! It is you who do not know what you are doing. You have allowed yourself to be blinded by an utter stranger. You have swallowed whole the lies she has handed out to you. Mother, I understand it all now. This woman is a rank imposter, employed by others to ruin the reputation of a prominent and successful business man, in order to extort money from him. Oh, I have heard a lot that she has been saying! Don't try to stop me. Isn't this kind of thing being done every day now? The daily papers are full of it. Why, even novels are just full of plots like that.
"Didn't that horrid woman whose latest book is being lauded in every column of reviews make one of her characters boast of being a daughter of Eve to some purpose because she had told some successful lies about one of her victims? I tell you, Mother, you don't know the world. Times have changed since you were a girl. You think every woman is good, simply because she is a woman and dresses respectably. That is why you are willing to believe all these terrible things about Rufus, and why you want me to believe them. Just because a woman has told you. Just ask her how much she is to be paid to bring about his ruin. Ask her that! Do you suppose she is to be paid whether she succeeds or not? It must be she isn't; that is why she is so persistent, sneaking in to tell tales to you when I'm not by, and get you on her side. She evidently is afraid she is going to lose her money!"
"Marguerite! Oh, my poor child!" exclaimed the mother in horror, beginning to cry. "Oh, Mrs. Dunlap, I beg you will forgive her. She doesn't know what she is saying."
"That is perfectly all right, Mrs. Sheldon, don't think of it for a moment. I understand."
But the girl's voice broke in scornfully: