Chapter 6

THE BEST MAN'S STORY

Trouble began to brew for the best man at my bridesmaid's dinner, but it was all his fault. He says it was mine.

I claim, and I think that all girls will support me in this theory, that at all wedding functions, such as teas, receptions, luncheons, and dinners, the best man owes the maid of honour the first and most of his attentions. It is her due, and no matter whether he likes her or hates her; no matter if he is already in love with another girl, or sees one there that he would like to be in love with, he belongs, for the wedding festivities, to the first bridesmaid. It is like the girl your hostess assigns to you at dinner,--you _must_ be nice to her.

So Cary Farquhar thought, and so I think. Artie Beguelin said:

"Then you oughtn't to have invited Flora Forsyth to the bridesmaid's dinner."

Well, perhaps I oughtn't. But I did, because she asked to come. One can't refuse a request of that sort. Even Aubrey admits that.

Flora was a dreamy, trusting blonde. She was an innocent appearing little thing, and although she was just out of college, I believed she would faint at the idea of a cigarette in a girl's fingers or any of the mad things college girls are supposed to do when larking. She had no sense of humour, and I simply could not think of her as up to any mischief. That is why, when she said she had fallen in love with me, I believed her. She knew I was to have Cary for my only attendant, but she begged so innocently to come to the bridesmaid's dinner and to sit with the family behind the white ribbon, that I hadn't the heart to say no. That is why she was at the dinner, and what happened there you shall hear presently.

Arthur Beguelin was the Angel's best man. He, too, was Aubrey's sole attendant, for we had no ushers.

Artie was neither clever nor stupid, but that gentle, amiable cross between the two which made him fair game for a designing girl. He was better than clever. He was magnetic, as Cary and Flora found to their sorrow.

His father had been enormously wealthy, but his vast property had slipped out of his keeping, and had become involved in a lawsuit of such dimensions and such hopeless duration that Artie might just as well consider himself as a ward in chancery, and be done with it.

This loss of fortune, however, instead of demoralizing him, had been his salvation. It set him to work, and made a man of him. He never believed that he would inherit a dollar of his father's, so he prepared to make his own way in the world, regardless of golden hopes.

But not so his friends. His prospects, hazy as they were, made him most interesting to match-making mothers, and as his indomitable courage made him interesting to the other and better sort, you will see that Artie was pursued rather more than most eligible young men. This pursuit had made him wary and cautious. Had he been more introspective, it would have embittered him; but it shows his amiable modesty when I assert that Artie only fought shy of the more aggressive anglers, whose landing-nets were always in evidence, while he never refused to swim nimbly around and even nibble at the bait of the more tactful.

I have described him thus carefully, because it just shows how the most wary of men can be caught napping by the right kind of cleverness, and which was the right girl for him it took both us and him some time to discover.

At first sight, it seemed to be Flora. As Aubrey said: "It was all off with him from the moment he saw her." He had been the stroke in the Yale crew during two glorious years of victory, and, like most men who gloried in the companionship of athletic girls, he elected to fall in love with Flora, who, the first time she met him, wanted to know the difference between a putter and a bunker, which so tickled Artie that he put in two good hours explaining it to her.

Cary had known Flora for some time, but two girls could not have been more unlike. Cary was rich, courted, and flattered. She had only to express a wish to have it granted, yet, strange anomaly, she was the most unselfish girl I ever knew, and was always going out of her way to be nice to people.

Flora was poor. She went to college by means of a loan from a rich woman, and kept herself there by winning scholarships. She expected to teach for a living, and she hated the prospect. She had to work hard for everything she had, which was probably the reason why she was so selfish. To be sure, she was always offering you things, but it was either after some one else had offered first, or else she offered things you couldn't possibly want. And as to offering to do things for you, I never saw her equal at the formula, "I am going down-town. Can't I do something for you?" Yet if you by any chance made the mistake of saying, "That's awfully good of you. I _would_ like three yards of French nainsook," in half an hour Flora would come in with the story that she had been telephoned out to luncheon and wasn't going down-town, or else had a headache and couldn't go, after all; or, if she went, she did her own shopping first and came in breathless with a "I'm so tired! I went everywhere for your French nainsook, but every shop was just out of it. I tried _so_ hard, and now you'll think I am just stupid and _can't_ shop."

At which you always had to comfort her and do something extra for her, to show that you didn't blame her in the least. Whenever she had grossly imposed upon you, Flora had a way of looking at you with what I called the "dog look,"--a humble, faithful, adoring, "don't-kick-me-because-I-love-you-so" look, which used to give me what Angel calls the jiggle-jaggles, which is only another name for twitching nerves,--either mental or physical.

However, I have noticed that these people who are always offering their "Can't I do something for you?" never expect to be taken up. I suppose it isn't in human nature any more to be helpful to a friend. The answer to that question is "Thank you so much, dear, for offering, but I really don't want a thing!" That cements the friendship.

Cary was honest, straightforward, and thoughtful. Flora was crafty, deceitful, and brilliant, but her innocent eyes and baby ways made her cleverness seem like that of a precocious child, so that she always disarmed suspicion.

She deceived me so skilfully and completely that I find myself thoroughly mixed in describing her, for at one moment I tell how she appeared to me at first, and the next I find myself setting her forth as I found her after Cary and Aubrey had set a trap to make me see her in her true light. They were obliged to set a trap, for my loyalty is of the blind, stupid sort, which will not be convinced, and all the arguments in the world would only have made me more ardently champion her as a friend.

You could not call Cary athletic, because she did not go in for out-of-door sports to the exclusion of the gentler forms of amusement. But whatever she did, she did so well that you would think she had given most of her time to the mastering of that one accomplishment. But here is where her cleverness showed most. It was not that she really did everything, and did it perfectly. It was that she never attempted anything which she had not mastered. For example, she never played whist, because she had no memory, no finesse, and because she played games of chance so much better. She could never settle herself down to a multitude of details, but she could plan and execute a coup of such brilliancy that it would make your hair stand on end. Such was Cary Farquhar, and her most successful coup was the way she compelled me to see Flora Forsyth in her true colours.

Sometimes I think I am quite clever. Again I think I am a perfect fool. And the agains come oftener than the sometimes.

I would enjoy making a continuous narrative of this story, as I could if I were writing a book, but this is a record of real life, and real life does not happen in finished chapters. If you try to make it, you either have to leave out a bit, or go back and repeat something.

Thus, in telling this story of Flora, if I told the perfect faith I had in her at first and of how utterly I came to know and despise her afterward, I should show to everybody the fool I made of myself, and that exhibition I prefer to keep as much to myself as possible. The Angel knows it, and that is bad enough. So that is why I must make a hodge-podge of it, telling a bit here and a bit there, just as things happened, and pretending that I saw through her from the first--which, however, I didn't.

But, in order to give some idea of her methods, which are of interest as a human document, I must set down faithfully how I came to be drawn into this love-story, and how the Angel and Cary pulled me out.

This is the very beginning of it.

If you knew our best man, you probably would not be surprised to make the discovery that I made--to wit: that two girls were in love with him at the same time, for the most ordinary of men have sometimes a powerful attraction for the most superior of girls, and Arthur Beguelin was much above the ordinary, in looks, manners, breeding, and wealth. He was, as I have said, almost rich, which would of itself, to the cynic, preclude his being at all nice. But he was nice. I liked him, the Angel liked him, and these two girls loved him.

I will admit, however, that I was surprised,--just a little,--at first, but after I thought about it, I said to Aubrey, "Well, why not?" He said, "Why not what?"

"Why _shouldn't_ two girls be in love with him?"

"They should," said the Angel, pleasantly. "There is no doubt in the world that they should. But who are the girls and who is the man?"

I thought of course that he knew what I was talking about, or I shouldn't have begun in the middle like that, but after all, if you _do_ begin in the middle, you can often skip the whole beginning, and hurry along to the end.

"Why, Artie Beg, to be sure! Who else? And as to the girls--well, as I discovered it for myself, I shall not be betraying their confidence to say that the girls are--will you _promise_ not to tell nor to interfere in anyway?"

"Of course," said the Angel.

"Well, the girls are Flora Forsyth and Cary Farquhar."

"Flora Forsyth!" exclaimed the Angel, with a wry face.

"Now, Aubrey, what _have_ you against that poor girl? To me she is one of the most fascinating creatures I ever saw. If I were a man, I should be crazy about her."

"Then if you had been Samson, Delilah would have made a fool of you just as easily as she did of him."

"But Flora is no Delilah, Aubrey."

"She's worse!" said the Angel, shortly.

Aubrey leaned back in his Morris chair and puffed at his pipe. Presently he spoke:

"Those two girls are both clever,--as clever as they make 'em,--but Cary's cleverness is full of ozone, while Flora's is permeated with a narcotic. Cary's tricks make one laugh, but the other girl's give one the shivers."

"Oh, is it as bad as that?" I said, in affright. "Don't you like her?"

"Like her!" reflected the Angel, slowly. "I hate her."

I gasped. Never, never had my husband expressed even a settled dislike of any one before, while as to the word "hate"--

"Oh, Aubrey!" I cried, tearfully. "I _wish_ you had said it before. The fact is, I've--well, I've invited her to visit me and she says she'll come."

If I expected an explosion, I was mistaken. Aubrey bit into his pipe-stem and sat looking at me for a moment without speaking, a kind, wistful look which completely undid me, and made me resolved never, _never_ again to do a single thing without consulting him first. Then he leaned forward and slowly began to empty and clean his pipe.

"You like her very much?" he said, tentatively.

"I do, indeed!" I exclaimed, enthusiastically. "And she is _so_ fond of you. She fairly adores you. If you would only _try_ to like her, Aubrey--she likes you so much--don't smile that way. You don't do her justice. Indeed you don't. Why, she is the dearest, most confiding, innocent little thing, just out of college last month--a baby couldn't have more clinging, dependent ways."

"I'm glad she is coming to visit you, if that's the way you feel about her," he said.

I drew a sigh of relief. _Some_ husbands would have made such a fuss that their wives would have felt obliged to cancel the invitation. Aubrey was different.

"How did you come to invite her?" he asked, presently.

I smiled in pleased anticipation of a good long talk with my husband, in which I could explain everything.

"Why, you know at the wedding I saw that Artie was very much taken with her,--and--"

"First, tell me how she came to sit with the family, inside the white ribbon?"

"Why, she wrote and asked if she couldn't. She said she loved me so she felt as if she were losing a sister, and that she wanted to sit with mother and mourn with the family."

Aubrey grinned and I felt foolish.

"And you believed her, you silly little cat!"

"It does sound idiotic to repeat it, but it read as if she meant it," I said, blushing.

"Never mind, dear," said the Angel. "You are all right."

Now, when Aubrey says I am "all right," it means that I am all wrong, but that he loves me in spite of it.

"Bee says," I said between laughing and crying, "that I am just like a stray dog. A pat on the head and a few kind words, and I'd follow anybody off."

"It would take something more substantial than that to make Bee follow anybody off," observed Bee's brother-in-law.

"Well, and so she and he were together all that evening, and afterward they corresponded. But Cary, being my bridesmaid, had, of course, the first claim on Artie's attention, but he was so taken with Flora that he sort of neglected Cary. Then, Cary being so spoiled by being rich and courted and flattered, was piqued into trying to make him notice her, which old stupid Artie refused to do, but tagged around after Flora as if she had hypnotized him. Then Cary must have been quite roused, for the first thing I knew she was showing unmistakable signs of its being the real thing with her, though, of course, she would deny it with oaths if I taxed her, while Flora--"

I stopped in sudden confusion.

"I forget," I faltered. "I said that neither had confided in me, but--"

Aubrey grinned.

"But Flora has," he supplemented. "She has confessed her love, not blushingly, but tumultuously, brazenly, tempestuously, and has begged you to help her!"

I paused aghast. Aubrey had exactly stated the case.

"Well, she told Cary, too," I said, in self-extenuation, "so she can't care very much that I've told you."

"Oh, no," said Aubrey, cheerfully. "She'll tell me herself the first chance she gets."

"She told Cary that she had told me, so we felt at liberty to talk it over," I added.

"She did?"

"And Cary was perfectly disgusted with her, and asked what I was going to do. I said I didn't know. Then what do you think she did? Cary asked me to ask Flora to visit me! What do you think of that for a bluff?"

Again Aubrey grinned. He shook his head.

"That was no bluff, Faith dear. That was a move in a game of chess. Cary Farquhar is the choicest--_unmarried_--girl I know! By Jove, she's a corker!"

"She just did it to throw me off--to show me that _she_ didn't want him!" I persisted.

The Angel shook his head and smiled inscrutably.

"When does she come?" he asked.

"Next week."

Aubrey pulled at his pipe.

"There will be something doing here next week, I'm thinking."

There was something doing.

First, I told old Mary that I was going to have company.

One ordinarily does not ask permission of one's cook, but Mary was such a mother to me that I felt the announcement to be no more than her due.

"Who is it, Missus, dear?"

"Miss Flora Forsyth. Have you ever heard me speak of her?"

"Do you mean that blonde on the mantelpiece?" she asked, in the conversational tone of one who but passed the time o' day.

"Mary!" I said.

She walked up to Flora's picture, took it down, looked at it, and put it back.

"Well," I said, tentatively, "what do you think of her?"

"What do I think of her?" demanded Mary, wheeling on me so suddenly that I dodged. "I think she is a little blister--that's what I think of her. And you'll rue the day you ever asked her into your house."

Ordinarily one would reprove one's cook for such freedom of speech, but I had brought it on myself. Therefore I saved my breath, put on my hat, and went out, ruminating and somewhat shaken in my mind to have the two household authorities against me.

However, true to my determination to make her visit as attractive as possible, I purchased at least a dozen sorts of fine French marmalades, jellies, sweets, and fancy pickles, such as schoolgirls love.

She had told me so many times how she had always wanted her breakfast in her room, but had never been able to have it, that I decided to give her that privilege in my house. I told Mary with some misgivings, and showed her the things I had bought. To my surprise, Mary assented joyfully. I never knew why until after Flora left. Then Mary told me. I even selected the china she was to use on the breakfast-tray. It was blue and gold. Flora loved blue. Then I took a final look at everything, gave a few last orders, and dismissed all worry from my mind.

Her room, _the guest chamber_ of the Jardines, was fresh for her. No one had ever slept in that bed, fluttered those curtains, nor written at that desk. Flora would be its first occupant.

And how her blond beauty matched its pale blue and gold loveliness! It gave me thrills of delight to think of her in the midst of it all.

But of course it was Cary I loved. Flora simply fascinated me. She possessed the attractions of a Circe, but Cary was worth a million of her, and I knew it and I wanted her to have Artie Beg, or anybody else on earth she fancied. The whole proposition was as plain as day when I came to think about it. I was Cary's champion, Cary's friend, and intended Cary to win. Why, therefore, had I permitted myself to be inveigled into asking Flora to visit me, under the supposition that I was going to help her? It was not because Cary had begged me to. Not at all. It was Flora herself who had managed it, I reflected, and it gave me a bitter, uncomfortable twinge to realize that whatever Flora had wanted me to do, in our brief friendship, I had done, no matter whose judgment it went against.

Had the girl hypnotic power, or was I a weak fool to be flattered into doing her bidding?

I don't like to think of myself as a weak fool, even for the sake of argument.

The two girls had hated each other at sight, as was natural. Cary admitted the reason with glorious frankness.

"Of course I hate her," she said, with a lift of her sleek brown head, "didn't she usurp my prerogatives at the wedding? The best man belongs, for that evening alone, to the maid of honour--he can't escape it--it is his fate. Common civility should have chained him to my chariot wheels, but with that white-headed Lilith at work on him, with her half-shut eyes, she had him queered before he even saw me. But wait. My turn will come."

Flora said to me:

"Of course I hate her, because _you_ love her. You love her better than you love me. You have known her longer--that's the only reason! She doesn't care _that_ for you. It's because you are married, and can give her a good time that she pretends to care for you. _I_ know. Oh, you may laugh and think I am jealous or insane or anything you like. Well, then, I _am_ jealous, for I love you better than anybody in the world, and I want you to love me in the same way. I love you better than I love my mother--or my father--or even Artie Beg! And I am jealous of every one you speak to. I am jealous most of all of Aubrey, for you have eyes for no one on earth but him. I could hate him when I think of it."

At that I _did_ laugh, but she was a good actress, and said it as if she meant it.

Flora always acted as if she knew of my repressed childhood, and of how, all my life, I had thirsted for praise. No matter if it had been put on with a trowel, as hers undoubtedly was, I would have wrapped myself in its tropical warmth and luxuriance, and never paused to quarrel with its effulgence. While dear old Cary let her actions speak, and seldom put her affection for me into words. But she had been on the eve of sailing for a winter in Egypt when my hurried wedding preparations and frantic telegram arrested her. The party sailed without her, and she did not try to follow. And that was only one of the many sacrifices she had made for me, and made without a word, too.

She was a girl of thought and of ideas, but unfortunately she was a great heiress, and fortune-hunters had made her suspicious and cynical. Only Aubrey and I knew how glorious she could be when she let herself out and expressed her real self.

The first thing Flora did to make me uncomfortable was to pump the Angel about Artie's law-suit.

It was so intricate, so long drawn out, and so enormous in its proportions, that it bade fair to resemble the famous Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We had never mentioned it to Artie, but Flora, after a few reluctant words from Aubrey, persuaded Artie, in the easiest way imaginable, to tell her everything about it, from its inception. She told me she had even read half a dozen of her uncle's law-books, which bore upon the knotty points Artie had described to her. Instead of arousing his suspicions of mercenary motives, her innocent manner and flowerlike face deceived him into believing that her interest was very commendable. She explained that she had always wanted to study law, but that her father wouldn't let her, so that she always coaxed her friends to describe their law-suits to her, and then she read up on them by herself. Artie thought this was wonderful. So it was.

Cary would never listen to a word about it, nor read about it in the papers; nor could she be inveigled into expressing an opinion about it one way or the other. Her pride revolted from appearing even to know that he had such prospects, faint and distant though they were.

When Flora came, Mary put on her spectacles before she opened the door. I noticed the look she gave all three of us. It did not speak well for Flora.

But, at first, her shyness and modesty left nothing to be desired. Her clothes were simple even to plainness, her voice soft and deprecating, and her manner deferential in the extreme. She was always asking advice, and where that advice was given, she always followed it. Flattery could go no further.

Artie came to see her, morning, noon, and night. I was horrified to discover how far things seemed to have progressed, for, after all, it was Cary who _must_ have Artie if she wanted him.

Cary called on Flora once, and we returned it, but she did not come again. So I resolved on a dinner, and Cary promised to come. The others were to be the Jimmies, Bee, and three more persons so insignificant, so vapid, so entirely not worth describing that, in a race, they would not even be mentioned as "also rans." In short, they were the typical dinner-guests the hostess always fills in with.

I worked hard on that dinner. Flora offered to help, but Mary, without actually refusing her assistance, managed to do without it, and I did not realize until afterward how quickly Flora accepted her fate, and curled herself up luxuriously on Aubrey's couch in Aubrey's particular corner to read, while I bleached the almonds which she had offered to do.

Flora kept me well informed of the progress of Artie's passion for her, and I could do nothing. I was surprised at her confiding such details to any one, dismayed for Cary's sake, and worried as to how it would turn out.

Finally the evening of the dinner came. I dressed and ran out to the kitchen to see if everything was all right, for Mary was so jealous she refused to let me engage an assistant, but doggedly persisted in preparing and serving the dinner entirely by herself.

To my surprise, I found the dining-room and kitchen shades pulled up to the tops of the windows, while every handsome dish Mary intended to use, and all the extra silver, were carefully placed on top of the laundry-tubs. Mary, apparently unconscious of observation, was flying around with pink cheeks, and the eyes behind the spectacles snapping with excitement.

"Don't say a word, Missus," she said, sitting on her heels before the oven door. "I did it for the benefit of the rubber factory opposite. They think I don't notice, but look at them windows. Not a light in any of 'em, but all the curtains moving just a little. Do they think I don't know there's a rubber behind every damn one of 'em? Don't laugh, Missus dear, and don't look over there, whatever you do. If they want a look at the things we eat, why let 'em! They know what they cost, but I'll bet they never do more than ask the price of 'em, and then buy soup-bones and canned vegetables for their own stomachs."

Mary didn't say stomachs, but much of Mary's conversation does not look well in print.

"And just wait till I take in the 'peche flambée'!" she chuckled. "I'll bet they'll order out the fire department!"

I said nothing, for the very excellent reason that there was really nothing to say. Mary has a way of being rather conclusive. There was no use in remonstrating or telling her not to, for she simply would not have obeyed me, so I forbore to give the order.

Flora heard Mary let Artie Beg in, and ran down the corridor to meet him. She was a vision in white--her graduation dress--with her snowy shoulders rising modestly from a tulle bertha. I paused in order to let her greet him first, and, to my consternation, before I could make known my presence, I heard her say, plaintively:

"Aren't you going to kiss me?"

Then with a stifled groan Artie flung his arms around her, pressing her to him as if he would never let her go. Then he pushed her away from him almost roughly, and Flora laughed a low, tantalizing laugh, and crept back to him to lean her head on his shoulder, and lay her arms around his neck.

I turned and fled. I fairly stampeded down the hall, running full tilt against Aubrey, and nearly folding him up.

"Oh! Oh!" I gasped, dancing up and down before him excitedly.

He seized both my hands.

"Hold still, Faith! What's the matter? Tell me!"

"They're engaged!" I wailed. "I'm too late! Cary has lost him!"

"Who?"

"Artie and Flora."

"What makes you think so?"

"He's kissing her! And she asked him to, just as if she had a right. I would not think so much of it, if he had just grabbed her and kissed her without a word, for she looks too witching, and any man might lose his head, but for her to ask for it--oh, what shall I do!"

"Hold on! You say she asked him to--tell me just how."

I told him.

The Angel put both hands in his pockets and whistled.

"Don't worry," he said. "They're not engaged."

I felt relieved at once, for the Angel does not write books from guesswork. He _knows_ things.

But I was greatly confused at going back. Of course they did not know that I had seen and heard, and equally, of course, I could not tell them. But I had my confusion all to myself. Artie seemed about as usual (which he wouldn't have done if he had known that there was powder on his coat), and Flora was as cool as an iceberg.

It seems to me, as I look back, that that was the first time I suspected anything. It was almost uncanny to see her sitting there looking so shy and demure, when two minutes before she had begged a man to kiss her, and laughed that cool, tantalizing laugh, as of one who knew her power and revelled in the sight of her victim's struggles to escape.

I turned to Cary, my well-bred girl, my friend, with a feeling of relief, as if I had found a refuge. Cary flushed a little as she greeted Artie, and Flora's lip curled perceptibly.

I glanced at the Angel, and saw that he, too, had noticed it. But then, Aubrey sees everything. That is why he writes as he does. His manner as he greeted Cary was so cordial that it caused Artie to look up, and then, to my surprise, Artie got up from his chair, and came and stood by Cary and took her fan.

I wish you could have seen Flora's blue eyes turn green.

Then Bee and the Jimmies came, and, as usual, I straightway forgot everything else, and bent my energies toward playing the part of hostess so that Bee would not feel disgraced.

I followed her eye as it travelled over our gowns and around the apartment. Bee does not realize that she has silently appointed herself Superior General to the universe, so she was somewhat disconcerted, when, as she finally leaned back with a sigh which seemed to say, "This is really as well as anybody could do who didn't have me to consult with," to hear Aubrey say, slyly:

"Well, Bee, does it suit?"

Bee assumed her most Park Lane air, and replied:

"I don't know what you mean, Aubrey."

Then to avoid further pleasantries, Mary standing in the doorway, I marshalled them all out to the table.

Flora was between Aubrey and Artie, but I put Cary on the other side of Artie, while I took Jimmie by me, and mercilessly handed Mrs. Jimmie over to the "also rans."

Flora, who pretended jealousy of the Angel to veil her instinctive dislike of one who read her through and through, frankly turned her back on him, and tried all her wiles on Artie, which would not have disconcerted him, had not the Also Ran commenced to smile and attract Mrs. Jimmie's attention to it.

This brought Artie from his trance sufficiently to cause him to turn his attention to Cary, but it was so palpably forced that Cary devoted herself with ardour to Jimmie, and left Artie speechless.

Then something spurred Flora to do a foolish thing. She deliberately began to bait Cary--to say things to annoy her--to try to mortify her. At first Cary refused to see what was evident to the rest of us. (Oh, my dinner-party was proving such a success!)

At this critical juncture, Mary appeared bearing the chafing-dish full of blazing, flaming peaches, and in watching me ladle the fiery liquid, hostilities were for the moment discontinued. Involuntarily, as Mary's satisfied countenance betokened her complete happiness at the successful culmination of the dinner, my eyes wandered to the dining-room windows. I had drawn the shades with my own hand, but some mysterious agent had been at work, for they were let fly to the very window-tops.

I glanced at Mary. She pressed her lips together with a whimsical twist, and surreptitiously raised a finger in sly warning.

"Them rubbers are having a fit!" she murmured in my ear, as she deferentially took a blazing peach from me, and placed it before Flora with a look so black it seemed to say:

"If you get your deserts, you little blister, it would set fire to you!"

They were talking about love when I began listening again,--and Cary made some remark inaudible to me, which gave Flora the opportunity to say:

"Is it true, then, what I have heard? Were you ever disappointed in love?"

"Always!" said Cary, evenly.

Jimmie grinned and jogged my elbow.

"Isn't she a dandy?" he whispered. "Never turned a hair."

Flora flushed angrily because Artie laughed and looked appreciatively at Cary, as if really seeing her for the first time.

Every woman knows when that supreme moment comes--at least, every woman has who has liked a man before he has liked her. She feels it without looking at him. She knows it from the innermost consciousness of her being. "He is looking at me," says her heart, "for the first time, with the eyes which a man has for a woman."

Many a man has been selected first, as Cary selected Artie, and been wooed by her as modestly and legitimately as she did, without suspecting that he did not take the initiative every time.

So a little modest courage and restrained self-reliance crept into Cary's manner, which had never been there before, and I, believing implicitly in the Angel's _ipse dixit_ that Flora and the best man were not engaged, had visions of the first bridesmaid's winning her lost place with him, and, oh, making him pay for his neglect.

If man only knew how heavily a flouted woman, after she has safely won him, does make him pay for his bad taste, he would be more careful.

But Artie never knew. He sat there, listening to the biting words which passed back and forth between Flora and Cary, without his modesty permitting him to realize that he was the stake these two clever girls were throwing mental dice for.

But Jimmie knew, for his blue eyes turned black, and his cigarettes burned out in two puffs, and his nervous hands clenched and unclenched in his wicked wish to say something to aggravate the affair. Finally, meeting my derisive grin, he wrenched my little finger under the table, under pretence of picking up my handkerchief, and whispered:

"Oh, Lord, give me strength to keep out of this row!"

I laughed, of course, and so missed something, for the next thing I heard, the conversation had become more personal, and Flora was saying:

"Love is an acquisition. The more you have, the more you want."

"Pardon me," said Cary. "To my mind, love is a sacrifice. Yet the more you give, the more you gain."

"But I don't want to believe that!" pouted Flora, charmingly. "That is a cruel, ascetic conception of love. It makes me shiver, like reading the New Testament."

For the first time Artie spoke.

"You prefer, then, the Song of Solomon?" And the Angel brought his hand down on the table a little heavily, and looked at me.

"Yes, I do!" laughed Flora, thinking she had scored. "And I know--because I have loved!"

"You have loved, have you?" said Cary, leaning forward to look at her across Artie's tucked shirt-front. "Then if you have, truly and deeply, as a woman can, when she meets the man who is her mate, can you jest so lightly about love being an acquisition? Are you thinking of his income and what he can give you more than your father has been able to do? Does your idea of marriage consist of dinner-parties and routs? Or do you think of the man himself? Of his noble qualities of heart and mind? Does not the idea of permanent prosperity sometimes fade, and in its place do you not sometimes see the man you love, poor, neglected by his friends, and jeered by his enemies? Does he not sometimes appear to you stretched on a weary bed of sickness? Can you picture yourself his only friend, his only helper, his only comforter? If he were crippled for life, would you go out to try to earn bread for two, rejoicing that Fate had only taken his strength to toil, and not his strength to love? Would you still count yourself a blessed woman if you knew that everything were swept away but the love of a man worth loving like that?"

Flora quailed, and drew back, abashed and a little frightened, but Artie's face was a study. At a sign from Aubrey, I looked at Mrs. Jimmie and rose. Just behind me, as I turned, I heard Artie whisper to Cary:

"Tell me, have _you_ ever loved like that?"

And Cary's murmured reply:

"Not yet, but--I could."

After that, Flora's fascination seemed to wane. Mrs. Jimmie never had liked her, and as we went into the drawing-room she gave Cary one of her rare and highly prized caresses, which Cary received gratefully.

As for Artie, he never left Cary's side. He was the first to follow us to the drawing-room, for as I always let men smoke at the table, we always leave it _en masse_.

He said little, but he listened to every word Cary spoke, and he watched her as if fascinated.

I was jubilant, and my sober old Angel almost permitted himself to look pleased, but not quite. The Angel is never reckless with his emotions.

Dinner had been over about two hours, and Mrs. Jimmie was beginning to look at the clock, when Aubrey approached and whispered:

"I haven't heard a sound in the kitchen since dinner, and Mary hasn't entered the dining-room. Don't you think we would better take a look at her?"

The kitchen was separated from the dining-room by only the butler's pantry. As we opened the swinging door, a figure holding a chafing-dish in both hands attempted to rise from the cracker-box, but sank back again, shaking with laughter.

"It's me, Boss dear! Don't look so scared, but I'm drunk as a fool. How many of them awful peaches did you eat, Missis?"

"Only one," I said.

"And you, Boss?"

"Only one. How many did you eat?"

"Only half a one, but I finished all the juice in the dish--"

"Juice!" I cried. "Why, Mary, that was brandy and kirschwasser, and two or three other things."

"Don't I know it? But I never thought, Missis dear, I came here to rubber at that fight between Miss Farquhar and the little blister--"

"Mary!"

"Not a word more, Missis dear, if you don't like it! But anyhow I came here to--rest myself, and I began absent-mindedly to take a sip out of this big spoon here, and soon it was all gone. Then when you all went into the other room, I tried to get up, but my legs didn't want to, and, be the powers, they haven't wanted to since, though I've tried 'em every two minutes or so. I've just set here, helpless as a new-born babe that can't roll over in its crib. I meant to flag the first one of you that went past the door, for if somebody would prop me up in front of the sink, I could begin on a pile of dishes there big enough to scare a dog from his cats."

Aubrey and I leaned against each other in silent but hysterical delight. Mary was deeply pleased to see us so diverted.

Her legs recovered sufficiently before we left for her to walk to the sink, while we went back to our guests.

Every one was leaving, and Artie was taking Cary home. I looked to see how Flora took it, but her appealing blue eyes were fixed in their most appealing way upon the Also Ran, who was plainly undergoing thrills of exquisite torture therefrom. Jimmie gave one look at the tableau, and turned toward the door with his tongue in his cheek.

After that curious evening, there seemed to be a tremendous emotional upheaval. Artie hardly came near Flora, and when he did call, appeared to derive much satisfaction from gazing at her with a quizzical look in his eyes which seemed to annoy her excessively. The Also Ran was omnipresent, and was instant in season, out of season. But instead of arousing Artie's jealousy, this seemed only to amuse him.

Finally the cause of Artie's visits developed. He blurted it out to me one day with the red face of a shamed schoolboy.

"Faith, I wish you'd do me the favour to ask Cary Farquhar here some evening, and let me know! I've been going there till I'm ashamed to face the butler, but I never can see her alone, and the last two times she has sent down her excuses, and wouldn't see me at all."

I could have squealed for joy, but, mindful of Cary's dignity, I said:

"I don't believe she'd come, Artie. I'm afraid--"

"Afraid that she'd suspect that I would be here too? I don't believe I've made it as plain as that!" he interrupted.

"Do you mean to say that you are really and truly--?"

"I mean just that," he said, with a new earnestness in his manner, that I never had noted before.

"Oh, Artie!" I cried. "I'm _so_ glad! But what if she's--"

"Don't say it! It makes me cold all over to think of it. That's why I want you to ask her here. I've _got_ to see her. Why, Faith, she's--really, Faith, she's the _only_ girl in the world, now _isn't_ she?"

"So I've thought for years!" I cried, warmly.

"Talk about love being instantaneous," said Artie, plunging his hands into his pockets, and striding up and down. "I've loved her and loved her _hard_ ever since she explained what love meant to her that night at your dinner. Why, if I could get her to love _me_ that way, I'd be richer than John D! But shucks! She never will! What am _I_, I'd like to know, to expect such a miracle?"

"You're very nice!" I stuttered, in my haste, "and just the man for her, both Aubrey and I think, but I'll tell you where the trouble is. She thinks you belong to Flora."

"Never!" replied Artie, vehemently. "I never _thought_ of marrying Flora. She--well, she sort of appealed to me--you know how! She wanted me to help her to understand golf. She said it made her feel so out of it not to know what people were talking about who played the game--you know she was a poke at college, and didn't go in for athletics at all. Well, you can understand it when you look at her. _She_ couldn't get into a sweater and a short skirt and play basket-ball, now could she? She'd be wanting some man always about to hold her things or pitch the ball for her. She is such a dependent little thing. Then she had always wanted to study law and her people wouldn't let her--don't blame 'em for it!--but she wanted me to help her to understand it just for practice, she said, so I tried to. But as to _marrying_ her! Well, to tell the truth--she--er--she does things--I mean, I think her emotions are a little too volcanic to suit _me_, and I'm no prude.

"You'll tell Cary this, won't you, Faith? All but that last. Explain how I came to get tangled up with the girl. You can do it so she won't suspect that you're working for me. You can bring it in casually, without bungling it. Tell her I never gave a serious thought to Flora in my life."

"I will, and I'll get her here for you!" I cried, as he rose to go.

I followed him to the door, and as I closed it after him the door of the butler's pantry opened noiselessly, and there stood old Mary with her finger on her lip. She motioned me to precede her, and she followed me down the hall to my room and into it, carefully closing the door behind her. "Missis," she whispered, kneeling down beside my chair. "Scold me! Do! I've been made the real fool of by that little blister. Lord, if I wouldn't like to take her across my knee with a fat pine shingle in my good right hand. Listen! She heard you at the telephone, and knew you expected Mr. Beguelin this afternoon, so she comes to me just after lunch and she says to me, 'Mary, Mr. Beguelin is coming this evening, so I think I'll take a little nap on the couch if you'll cover me up with the brown rug.' The brown rug, see? Just the colour of the couch, and the one I always keep put away for the Boss. Of course I couldn't refuse after she said you said to give it to her--"

"I didn't," I interrupted.

"I know it. I know it now! But the little devil knew that I was going out, and that you would answer the door yourself--"

"Mary!" I shrieked, in a whisper. "She wasn't in there all the time, was she?"

"That's just what she was! Listening to every word you said. I just came in a minute ago, or I'd have let you know. But he got up to go, just as I had my hand on the door-knob."

"What shall I do?" I murmured, distractedly. Then, after a pause, I said, "Perhaps she was asleep and didn't hear!"

Mary gave me such a contemptuous look that I hurriedly apologized.

Then the Angel came in, and I told Mary to go, and then I told him everything. He thought quite awhile before speaking.

"Do you care for her very much, Faith dear?" he said, in his dear, gentle way.

"If she has done the abominable thing that Mary says, I'll--hate her! I'll turn her out of the house!" I cried, viciously.

"Ah!" said Aubrey, in a satisfied tone. He knows I wouldn't, but it does do me so much good to threaten to do the awful things I'd like to do if I were a cruel woman.

He rose and left the room. I started to follow him, but he waved me back.

"I won't be gone a moment. Wait for me here."

I waited three or four years, and then, when I had grown white-haired with age, he came back.

"Begin at the beginning, tell everything, and don't skip a word," I demanded.

"Well," he began, obediently. "She was sobbing gently--not for effect this time. I went in softly, and asked her what the matter was. She said she had been out all the afternoon to see a friend who had just been obliged to place her mother in a lunatic asylum, and she was crying for sympathy. Then, as she saw me look at my rug, she said Mary had left the rug out for her to take a nap early in the afternoon, and that she had intended to, but had decided to go out instead. Now what I object to is the style of her lying. I admire a good lie, but a clumsy, misshapen, rippled affair like that one is an abomination in the sight of the Lord."

I stood up with a flaming face.

"Don't get excited," said Aubrey. "She is going home to-morrow. Keep calm to-night, and the next time you see Artie, he will relieve all your feelings by what he will say."

"Why? What does he know?"

"Well, the Also Ran admires athletic girls, you know, not being able to sit astride a horse himself, and through his boasting Artie has discovered that Flora is a crack golf player--won the cup for her college in her junior year."

I fell on the bed in a fit of hysterical laughter.

"If that's the way you are going to take it, I feel that I can tell you the worst," said Aubrey, with a relieved face. "The fact is, I believe that that girl has a game on with the Also Ran."

"Oh, _no_, Aubrey!" I cried. "I know that she is too desperately in love with Artie to care about anybody else. She is so fascinating I have but one fear, and that is that Artie will come under her sway again. If he does, Cary would never forgive it."

"You are barking up the wrong tree, my dear," said my husband. "It is far more likely that Artie has already gone too far with Flora for Cary to forgive, and that's why she won't see him."

At that, I tossed my head, for I felt that I knew how both Cary and Flora loved better than Aubrey did. Flattering myself, also, that I knew men pretty well, I had my doubts about the strength of Artie's character. It takes real courage for a man to be true to one woman, if another woman has pitted her fascinations against him.

I intended to avoid Flora, but I found her lying in wait for me, and beckoning me from the doorway. I went in, and at once, in order to seem natural, remarked upon her red eyes. But it seems that that was exactly what she wanted me to do. The girl had no pride. She _wanted_ me to pity her.

"I'm ready to kill myself!" she cried. "I am perfectly sure that Artie has only been flirting with me and that some one has come between us. You can't want Cary to have him, or why did you invite me here, and arrange for me to see so much of him, and try so hard to bring us together? You are not two-faced like that, I hope?"

I was too bewildered to speak. Yet how could I answer her questions? Before I left her, I was convinced that it was all my fault. I told Aubrey so.

"Nonsense!" he said, quite roughly for him. "I think Mary's name for Flora is a good one. She is a little blister."

"No," I said, "she is not bad at heart. She is simply an impulsive, uncontrolled little animal, and more frank in her loves than most of us. That's all."

I saw the Angel set his lips together as if he could say something if he only dared, but his way of managing me is to give me my head and let circumstances teach me. He never forces Nature's hand.

Flora's visit was to have terminated the next day, but, to Aubrey's intense disgust and my utter rout, she begged for just three days more, and before I knew it I had consented. As I hurriedly left the room after consenting, I turned suddenly and met her gaze. Her eyes were a mere slit in her face, so narrowed and crafty they were. And the look she shot at me was a look of hatred.

Too bewildered by this curious girl's inexplicable actions to try to unravel my emotions and come to a decision regarding her, I kept out of her way all I could. I was simply waiting--waiting impatiently for the three days to pass. I only hoped that Artie would not come again while she was here.

But, alas, the very next morning I was at the telephone when I heard Flora run to the door to let somebody in, and before I could speak I heard her say, in that surprised, complaining tone of hers, "Aren't you going to kiss me?" and then--well, I got up and slammed the door so hard that the key fell out.

What a fool Artie was? What fools _all_ men were, not to be able to keep faith with a woman, and such a woman as Cary Farquhar! I rushed from the study into my room, and burst into a storm of tears, in the midst of which Aubrey found me.

"Poor little Faith! Poor, discouraged, little match-maker!" he said, smoothing my hair. But at that last I sat up and shook his hand off.

"It's so _disgusting_ of him!" I stammered. "If you could have heard him when he was talking about Flora!"

"How do you know it was Artie who came in?" said Aubrey, gently.

I opened my mouth and simply stared at him. Then I went to the glass, smoothed my hair and straightened my belt.

"Where are you going?" asked my husband.

"I am going to _see_!" I exclaimed. "And if it _isn't_ Artie--if she is kissing every man that comes into this house, I'll--I'll _kill_ her."

"What! You'll kill her if you find that Artie is not the faithless wretch you were crying about?"

"Oh, Aubrey! How _can_ you?" I cried.

He tried to catch me as I flew past, but I eluded him, and started firmly down the long hall. But in spite of myself, my feet dragged. What was Flora attempting? Did she hate me as her look implied? Did she love Artie as she declared, or was she simply endeavouring to get married, and so save herself from a life of teaching, which she openly detested?

I kept on, however, goaded by my righteous indignation. To my astonishment I found, not Artie, but the Also Ran, with Flora frankly in his arms.

They sprang up at my swift entrance, and the man had the grace to look furiously confused. Flora never even changed colour. I asked no questions. I simply stood before them in accusing silence. But my look was black and ominous. Flora gave one swift glance at my uncompromising attitude, and then, with a modesty and grace and sweet appealing humility impossible to describe, she came a step toward me, holding out her arms and saying, plaintively:

"Won't you congratulate me? We are engaged."

I was struck dumb--that is, I would have been struck dumb, if I had not been rendered not only speechless, but unable to move by the actions of the man. Entirely unmindful of my presence, he sprang toward Flora, stammering, brokenly:

"Do you mean it, dear? Have you decided already? You said six months! You are sure you mean it?"

Then, not seeing the angry colour flame into Flora's pale, calm face, he turned to me, saying, brokenly:

"Oh, Mrs. Jardine! She has teased me so! I never dreamed she would decide so quickly. And I--you will forgive me! but I love her so!"

I looked away from his twitching face to Flora, and mentally resolved never to call him an Also Ran again. He did not deserve it. I am seldom sarcastic, but I knew Flora would understand.

"Flora," I said, distinctly, "you are to be congratulated."

Then I turned and left them.

The very day that Flora left, Cary came back to me.

"Well," she said, tentatively, "what do you think of her?"

"Well," I answered, cautiously, "I don't know."

Cary looked at me in disgust.

"Your loyalty amounts to nothing short of blindness and stupidity," she remarked, severely. "As for me, I am going to look at the nest the viper has left."

So saying, she got up and went into the blue room, Aubrey and I meekly following.

Pinned to the pillow was a note directed to me. Cary unpinned and handed it to me.

"Cleverest and best of women," it began, "Many thanks for your delightful hospitality. I have enjoyed it to the full--far more, indeed, than you know. Look under the mattress of this bed and you will understand."

We tore the bed to pieces without speaking. Then Aubrey and Cary looked at each other and laughed.

"_Now_ will you believe," said Cary.

There were cigarette-boxes full of nothing but butts and ashes. There were three of my low-cut bodices. There were some of Aubrey's ties and a number of my best handkerchiefs.

I said nothing. I simply stared.

"We all knew of these things, Faith dear," said Aubrey, "but even if you had caught her wearing your clothes or smoking, we knew she would lie out of it, so we waited."

"We knew she hated you so that she couldn't help telling you," added Cary.

"Hated me?" I murmured. "What for?"

Cary blushed furiously, and looked at Aubrey.

"Has Ar-- Have you--" I stammered, eagerly.

Cary nodded and Aubrey looked wise. Then Cary and I rushed for each other.

While we still had our arms around each other crying for joy, Mary appeared at the door with her apron filled with the neat little jars of jellies and marmalades I had got for Flora's breakfasts. They had not been opened. Mary regarded me with grim but whimsical defiance.

"The little blister never got a blamed one of 'em, Missis!" she said.