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
man; I'd have snubbed Balderstone the moment he spoke to me; and if
Stuart Harley had got a book out of my trip to Europe at all, it
would have been a series of papers on some such topic as 'The
Spinster Abroad, or How to be Happy though Single.
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