第68章

Just then her telephone began to ring. She started to move toward it, but Barney's grip checked her short.

"You're going to answer me--not any damned telephone! Let it ring!"

The bell rang for a minute or two before it stilled its shrill clamor.

Its ringing was in a way a brief respite to Maggie, for it gave her additional time to consider what should be her course. She realized that she dared not let Barney believe at this moment that she had turned against him. Again she fell back upon her cool, self-confident manner.

"You want to know why? The answer is simple enough. I thought I might try out an improvement of our plan--something that might suit me better."

"What's that?" Barney harshly demanded.

"Since Miss Sherwood fell for me so easy, it struck me that she'd be pretty sure to fall for me if I told her the whole truth about myself.

That is, everything except our scheme to play Dick for a sucker."

"What're you driving at?"

"Don't you see? If she forgave me being what I am, and I rather think she would, and with Dick liking me as he does--why, it struck me as the best thing for yours truly to marry Dick for keeps."

"What?" Though Barney's voice was low, it had the effect of a startled and savage roar. "And chuck us over-board?"

"Not at all. If I married Dick for keeps, I intended to pay you a lump sum, or else a regular amount each year."

"No, you don't!" Barney cried in the same muffled roar.

"Perhaps not--I haven't decided," Maggie said evenly. "I've merely been telling you, as you requested me, why I did as I did. I refused Dick, and lied to you, so that I might have more time to think over what I really wanted to do."

Instinctively she had counted on rousing Barney's jealousy in order to throw him off the track of her real thoughts. She succeeded.

"I can tell you what you're going to do!" Barney flung at her with fierce mastery. "You're not going to put over a sure-enough marriage with any Dick Sherwood! When there's that kind of a marriage, I'm going to be the man! And you're going to go right straight ahead with our old plan! Dick'll propose again if you give him half a chance. And when he does, you say 'yes'! Understand? That's what you're going to do!"

There was no safety in openly defying Barney. And as a matter of fact what he had ordered was what, in the shifting currents of her thoughts, the steady momentum of her old ambitions and purposes had been pushing her toward. So she said, in her even voice:

"You waste such a lot of your good energy, Barney, by exploding when there's nothing to blow up. That's exactly what I'd decided to do.

Miss Sherwood has asked me out to Cedar Crest to-morrow afternoon, and I'm going."

Barney let go the hold he had kept upon her wrists, and the dark look slowly lifted from his face. "Why didn't you tell a fellow this at first?" he half grumbled. then with a grim enthusiasm: "And when you come back, you're going to tell us it's all settled!"

Of course--if he asks me. And now suppose you two go away. You've given me a headache, and I want to rest."

"We'll go," said Barney. "But there may be some more points about this that we may want to talk over a little later to-night. So better get all the rest you can."

But when they had gone and left her to the silence of her pretentious and characterless suite, Maggie did not rest. She had made up her mind; she was going to do as she had said. But there was still that same turmoil within her.

Again she thought of Larry. But she would not admit to herself that her real motive for suddenly deciding to go to Cedar Crest on the morrow was the chance of seeing him.