Mary entered. The rest was natural development, a development which with her skill she made rapid. She was humorously frank about herself, and from personal bits which she adroitly dropped here and there, she let Miss Jones gather that she was the daughter of a New York family who moved among the city’s smarter set, that her husband was in the far West, on business, and that the other members of the family--they were an irrational and self-centered lot--were at Florida and California resorts gratifying their various individual predilections. Frankness begot frankness. Maisie Jones, a shut-in, was most willing to talk; but Mary, though making a show of lively interest in what was said, was shrewdly studying the girl. Maisie was strikingly handsome--a specimen of the American girl who has been through a fashionable school and then had a successful year or two in society. Mary catalogued the qualities her plans must take account of: she was spoiled, willful, proud, jealous--possibly vindictive. This first study of Maisie completed, and the opening made for future meetings, Mary started back to her suite, thrilling with confidence. Her plan was under way! And she was going to succeed, even though she was going it alone! But when she entered her sitting-room, she stopped short. For from a chair had risen the smiling person of Peter Loveman. “Good-morning, my dear,” said the little lawyer. “How did you get here?” she demanded sharply. “I told the people at the desk--I know ’em all here--that you’d telephoned for me, and had asked me to come right up. Your door was not locked. That’s all.” “But how did you know I was staying here?” “I’m afraid you were followed from the Mordona last night,” he answered placidly. “How many know this?” “Two or three--not many more,” answered the little lawyer. So then she was not to have her few unmolested days in which to mature and execute her present designs. Her dangers were in point of time closer to her than she had thought. Well, she must work all the more quickly, all the more skillfully. She seated herself, and he resumed his chair. “Of course you’ve come here for a reason, Mr. Loveman. What is it?” “That was a fine little idea, Mary, we originally worked out for this affair,” he began amiably--“for you to marry Jack Morton, keep the matter quiet until you were fixed solid with Jack, and until conditions developed so that you could win over his father. Yes, a fine little idea. It would have landed you at the top, where nothing ever could have touched you.” “What are you thinking of now?” she asked sharply. “Nothing, my dear,--only we both know that fine little idea has had a great fall, and all the king’s horses and all of God’s angels can’t ever put that idea together again.” “What are you thinking of?” she repeated.