but his books and his club, is to come in at the right moment and
expose the Count, and all such trash as that. I know at the outset
how it all is to be. You couldn't deceive a sensible girl five
minutes with Count Bonetti, any more than that Balderstone man, who
is now making a useless trip across the Atlantic with my aunt and her
twins, could have exerted a 'baleful influence' over me with his
diluted spiritualism. I'm not an idiot, my dear Dorothy."

"You are a heroine, love," returned Mrs. Willard.

"Perhaps--but I am the kind of heroine who would stop a play five
minutes after the curtain had risen on the first act if the remaining
four acts depended on her failing to see something that was plain to
the veriest dolt in the audience," Marguerite replied, with spirit.
"Nobody shall ever write me up save as I am."

"Well--perhaps you are wrong this time. Perhaps Mr. Harley isn't
going to make a book of you," said Mrs. Willard.

"Very likely he isn't," said Marguerite; "but he's trying it--I know
that much."

"And how, pray?" asked Mrs. Willard.

"That," said Marguerite, her frown vanishing and a smile taking its
place--"that is for the present my secret. I'll tell you some day,
but not until I have baffled Mr. Harley in his ill-advised purpose of
marrying me off to a man I don't want, and wouldn't have under any
circumstances. Even if I had caught the New York the other day his
plans would have miscarried. I'd never have married that Osborne