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:

"I certainly do know what I am saying. I understand it all perfectly. I can see the plot clearly now. I remember how this woman sat behind us in the cars, doubtless of purpose, listening to us. She was writing all the afternoon. I suppose she took down our private conversation. She probably carries on such business constantly, and chooses her victims among those who look as if they would care about their reputations and have plenty of money to hush up such tales. That is called blackmail, Mother, and I've read quite a lot about it in the papers. But they are not going to frighten us. Rufus and I will search this thing out to the foundations and make it impossible for this woman ever to get in her deadly work on any other good Christian man. It would be even worth sacrificing ourselves if we could do that. It is because people are afraid that they succumb to such things as this. We are not afraid! This woman listened to our plans and discussions, and knew just where to get us, that is all. If I hadn't been such a fool, I would have understood at the time, and I shouldn't have yielded to the spell she cast over me. She must be a hypnotist. She somehow succeeded in making everything look different from what it really is. But she can't do it again. I've got my eyes open!"

These are a few of the indignant sarcasms that the two long-suffering women had to listen to as the evening passed on. Mrs. Sheldon, mortified to the extreme of agony over the way her daughter was raving out against the wonderful woman who had saved her from a life of humiliation; alarmed beyond measure for the sanity of the one who was dearer to her than life, roused from her own weakness and tried every possible means to bring the girl to reason, all to no purpose.

At last Mary Dunlap who had stood by helpless, trying to think of something she might say which would bring the girl to her senses, leaned over toward the mother and said in a low tone:

"Suppose I just go away for the night now. She is excited and the sight of me only irritates her. If she could get some sleep she might be more reasonable in the morning. No, don't get up. I can find my own way to the door. You can telephone if you need me. I shall stay close to my room till I hear from you. And I will pray! Don't despair, dear sister! God is strong! Now—I will just slip away!"

The keen ears of the excited girl caught the last sentence.

"Yes, slip away by all means! I should have thought it might have occurred to you to do so before!" she flung after the stranger.

And then, as the door closed after Mary Dunlap, Marguerite Sheldon began to pace the floor, the very personification of indignant fury.

After she had exhausted herself with wild words, she suddenly flung herself down before her mother with her head in her mother's lap and began to sob:

"Oh, Mother, Mother, that dreadful woman has made me almost crazy!" she sobbed. "Some of the time I don't seem to know what I am saying. But I know this, and I mean it. I know that Rufus is true to me, and not only to me, but to God. He is very religious, Mother, he really is! You ought to hear him talk. And Mother, I know I love him, love him, with my whole soul! And I shall, forever and ever! No matter how many fiends from the underworld combine to try and make me false to him!"

At the word "love" her sobbing suddenly ceased and she sprang to her feet and began pacing up and down the room again; her voice rising to almost a shriek.

Of what use to attempt any further words with one who was surely not responsible for what she said or did? The mother slipped to her knees and began to pray.

A voice of power spoke to her soul, while she was still on her knees, seeking help. It almost seemed to her that she had heard the spoken words:

"'I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known. I will make darkness light before them; and crooked things straight.'"

Oh, the wonderful words! Could there be a human being any blinder than her Daisy? And, how terribly she needed new "paths!"

It was because of this amazing voice that she was able to get through that night, and the early part of the next day and finally to persuade her daughter to receive Mrs. Dunlap in the evening, and hear from her lips what she had to tell.

This was in accordance with that lady's earnest request made over the telephone, she having decided that the mother was physically unable to endure further strain. But that Christian worker had certainly occasion to look back upon the hour spent with Daisy Sheldon as one of the hardest in her by no means easy life. Not that Daisy did not try, at least at first, to treat her in accordance with all the rules of propriety.

But as the story progressed, there was all the time in the narrator's mind the question, "How shall I convince this girl that I am speaking only truth!" She who was used to being trusted implicitly, and quoted as unquestioned authority on all points connected with the work to which she had given her life!

Yet this girl listened in outward calm to the story that had caused her mother's lapse into almost unconsciousness, with a half smile on her lips, that deepened into a sneer when she finally spoke:

"That is a very strange story, Mrs. Dunlap! Being as well acquainted with Mr. Keller as I am, I don't quite understand how I could be expected to credit it! I should really like to see a photograph of this mysterious person, to help me in conceiving how a woman of your discernment could have been so deceived! Although I should remember that your acquaintance with Mr. Keller covered a very brief space of time; while he is, of course, my closest friend."

Could this be the girl who had so very recently clung to her, weeping, and begging to be shielded from even the sight of the man who was her "closest friend!" How could Mrs. Dunlap help giving a second's thought to such a question? But she turned swiftly from it and tried again.

"Wait, please," she said patiently, "I must tell you the rest. I have had a longer acquaintance with the man than you have heard as yet. After breakfast Mrs. Oliver asked him to take me into the library and show me some prints while she attended to other duties, and when he had closed and locked the doors, he threw himself on my mercy and begged me not to wreck his household by telling his wife and children what I knew about him. He did not attempt to deny that he was of course the same Mr. Keller with whom I had held a long conversation two nights before.

"In fact, he frankly owned that you had been what he called a 'temptation' to him, but that the marriage ceremony which he professed at that time to be about to enter into, had been only a joke, of course, intended to relieve your anxieties for being away from your mother longer than you had planned. I would not like to tear your heart nor soil my lips by repeating the words that he used to describe your wonderful mother and her ignorant prejudice as he called it.

"He also told me that his friend who posed as a minister for the time being was an amateur play actor who had successfully impersonated a clergyman while they were in college, which gave him the idea of a mock marriage to quiet your protests.

"And now, I will show you a paper written and signed by this man, in which he pledges never to write or telegraph or telephone you, or visit you again. It is a paper that I went back to secure, after I had started on this western trip, and the man knows that his keeping this agreement both in letter and spirit is the price of my silence toward his wife and children. His wife is a charming and beautiful woman, and his two daughters are as sweet and charming as yourself. It seemed terrible to wreck that home, but I would not keep silence unless I felt sure you would be safe forever from him."

Marguerite Sheldon tilted her patrician chin haughtily, a little smile of scorn on her lovely lips.

"Mrs. Dunlap," she said, "you certainly are mistress of your profession. You have worked out your evil plot to the last detail, I see. You must have gone to great pains to counterfeit Mr. Keller's hand writing. Perhaps stolen some of his own letters from my handbag to copy while I slept. It is certainly cleverly done. And of course this remarkable interview is a part of the whole scheme. One wonders whether you were cunning enough to concoct it on the spur of the moment, or whether you had it all prepared in reserve, if you found I did not fall for your story at once? Of course I know the daily papers are full of such tales of blackmail and the like. Perhaps if my tastes lay in that direction and I had posted myself better on the ways of such people as you, I might have been saved even the first humiliation of giving way before you and yielding to your influence which I now thoroughly believe to have been hypnotic.

"Of course I might have saved your time by saying all this before I heard you, but my mother was so anxious that I should let you speak that I have listened to your remarkable tale with what patience I could summon. But now I think we have had enough of this farce. I wish to distinctly state just now that I believe in Mr. Keller's honor and integrity as entirely as I did before this insane plot was planned; and until I hear from his own lips that he did not intend to marry me that night, and that he is not Mr. Rufus Keller, and never was, I shall not believe one word of this story; and I shall remain as I am now, his promised wife until he comes to claim me."

Before this outburst the baffled woman sat silent, dumbfounded. Such beautiful faith in such a worthless man had never come her way. She was not troubled over the insults that had been flung at her. The situation had become too grave to be thinking of self. The question that fairly appalled her was, how was it possible to save this poor blind child from her own folly? Suddenly she resolved to try one more thing. It seemed the last resort.

"Miss Sheldon," she said, speaking earnestly and looking straight into the flashing eyes of the angry girl, "will you put this thing to the test? Will you accompany me on the midnight Express to New York where I will take you to call on Mr. Ralph Oliver in his private office, Number — Fifth Avenue, that he may tell you himself that he is the Mr. Keller whom you know so well? I happen to know that he is to be in his office to-morrow morning. Will you go?"

What would the girl reply to this challenge?

What she did was to rise in utter silence and move swiftly across the room to the door, which she opened, and closed after her with a distinct slam!