"I wouldn't let it drive me mad," Severance swore. "I'd control myself--and control the man, too." "You would? Suppose I name your _bête noire_, Major John Garth?" Severance withered visibly. "Garth wouldn't do it," he stammered. "There you are!" sneered Marise. But she began to experience a very extraordinary sensation. It was composed of obstinacy, anger, vanity, recklessness, resentment, and several fierce sub-emotions, none of which she made the slightest effort to analyse. Tony Severance believed that his passion for her excused everything, because he thought it stronger than any other man living had ever felt. But there was another man, one at least--who thought and said the same thing of himself. Much as Tony hated and pretended to despise John Garth, without stopping to reflect an instant he set the Bounder aside as one among a few men who wouldn't stoop--who couldn't be tempted--to play so low a part as that of a "dummy husband." Was Tony right? Or was the man he discarded the very one who would marry her at any price? Dimly she wondered in a sullen and heavy curiosity. "There are plenty of other fellows--of sorts--to choose from, without dragging in Garth," Severance went on. "Give me leave, Marise (give me new life, by giving me leave!), to find such a man. If I must go without finding one here, I will search England. Or I can put it in the hands of----" "No!" shrilled Mary. "In no hands but our own." "I wash mine of it!" cried Marise. "Perhaps you will think it over--the pros and cons--with me, dear," coaxed her mother. "The wonderful future you could have with Tony, when the clouds should pass and all those millions----" The girl shrugged her shoulders. And turning without another word, she whirled away to her room. It would not have been true to nature if she hadn't slammed the door! Mary prepared to follow. "Go, Tony," she ordered. "Leave the poor child to me. All this is awful--terrible! But it isn't as if we were wishing for Miss Ionides' death. If she's doomed.... Oh, I hear Marise crying! Go at once--please!" CHAPTER X THE THING SHE COULD NOT EXPLAIN Marise and Mary Sorel talked late that night in the girl's room. The family breadwinner--always indulged--had not been so petted, so spoiled, since she was threatened with _grippe_ in the first week of her great London triumph. In those days she had shone as a bright planet rather than a fixed star. The proud but anxious mother had feared that some understudy might mine the new favourite's success, as Marise had mined the toppling fame of Elsa Fortescue. The invalid had been surrounded with the warmth of mother-love, caressed, almost hypnotised back to health, and after a worrying day of high temperature had been encouraged to the theatre without giving the understudy even one night's chance. This, although that young woman was dressed and painted for the part!