His fatuous slang irritated her enormously. "Isn’t it like Robert to turn up at the most inconvenient time imaginable? Just as Janet is on the point of being engaged! It spoils everything." "How did he locate us, I wonder?" said Kelly lamely. "I thought you had lost all track of him." When they had taken over Paulette’s, Cornelia had insisted on ruthlessly dropping former friends in impoverished circumstances on the plea that every connection that was not an asset was a liability. It had been a sore point between the two at first. "Pryor—the meddling fool—probably put him onto us," replied Cornelia. "Now everything’s sure to go to pot unless we can keep Robert from interfering. As long as he’s around, Janet will never marry Monsieur St. Hilaire." "She’s just crazy enough to throw away the chance of a lifetime," said Mazie, judging it expedient to chime in with Cornelia. "I don’t believe she’ll marry St. Hilaire, anyway," said Kelly, with the obstinacy of a mild nature. "She doesn’t love him, to begin with. And she isn’t the sort that’ll do a thing simply because other people say that it’s good for her. She’s the sort of girl that shapes her own future." "You’re as big a fool as Pryor," said Cornelia, flinging tempestuously out of the gymnasium. Poor Kelly was crestfallen. He walked sadly to a window, opened it, and took several deep breaths, his infallible remedy for depression of spirits. Mazie, relieved at Cornelia’s exit, lighted a cigarette and waited for him to finish. "Why is she so blamed anxious to have Janet marry this St. Hilaire?" he asked, turning slowly from the window. "Why? Ha, ha, the poor fish asks me why?" She punctuated the question with a hollow laugh. "Only because Janet doesn’t _want_ to marry him," she went on, perching herself jauntily on the desk. "Why, Simple Simon, the old girl would have nothing left to live for, if she couldn’t make people do what they _don’t_ want to do. Or, at least, if she couldn’t _prevent_ them from doing what they _do_ want to do—" The door flew open. "So that’s the way you talk about me behind my back?" cried Cornelia, the picture of outraged majesty. Mazie rapidly came down from her perch and slunk out of the room. The intruder turned her guns upon her husband. "And you encouraging the little snake. I wonder you don’t summon the whole staff in here to plot against me." Kelly, dismayed and crushed, received the broadside with head bowed.