As Mums said, "Tony _was_ unique." He was so fearfully, frightfully good-looking. Such lots of girls wanted him. They had all envied her. If she lost him, they wouldn't envy her any more. They'd pity her. Ugh! They'd say, "Poor Marise Sorel thought she'd got him, but he slipped away and married his rich cousin." This brought her down to bed-rock again. _Should_ she carry out the Plan, and make Tony hers in the end--which he vowed was very near? There were quite a lot of earls; but none like Tony. She'd had, and would have, other chances. But not to touch Tony. There _wasn't_ anything to touch Tony! And with all that money he'd talked about, he'd be a multi-millionaire. The whole world would be hers as his wife. Yet--there was "many a slip 'twixt cup and lip." Just supposing--oh well, she wouldn't think of it any more. It was maddening, agonising. She'd go to sleep and decide--_actually_ decide--in the morning! Marise flung herself down desperately, and burying her hot head in the cool pillows, she forced herself not to think. * * * * * When she waked, it was with the sensation that something hateful had happened or was going to happen. What was it? _Oh!_... The girl remembered the horrid thing, and how she had decided to keep free and punish Tony. Or had she quite decided? Hadn't she put off deciding? How dull as lead it would be to give up this tremendous adventure to which she'd impulsively pledged--_almost_ pledged!--herself! It might be a shocking and repulsive thing to do if some people did it, but it wouldn't, of course, be so with her. Lots of people had said that "Dolores" was a coarse, unpleasant part when Elsa Fortescue had played it, but no one had said such a word when she had taken it over. On the contrary! As this thought passed through her badly aching head, Marise dimly realised that marriage with Major Garth--accepting him as a dummy husband, having to fight him, perhaps; "seeing what he would do," whether he would try the old Claude Melnotte or Petruchio stuff, or whether he'd work up new business of his own--would be quite the most exacting emotional part for which she'd ever been cast. Suddenly she saw how she could punish Tony severely, even though she fell in with his plans; how she could have that satisfaction, and at the same time the satisfaction of not losing him. "It's like having your cake and eating it too!" she thought.