Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 144: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

614 because she was a business woman and not our—our social equal!” the young man laughed savagely, contemptuously at his parent. ‘‘ Our social equal! As if—” ‘Well, is she?” ‘“‘ Say, you don’t suppose she looks like that as a rule, do you?” Angela’s brother demanded. “I don’t know what’s hap- pened to Helen to-night, but she’s the sweet- est, the loveliest, the dearest—”’ He ceased again, this time because the alleged Miss Woodbury’s arms were about his neck and the vehemence of Miss Starr’s emotion, a moment back, was as nothing to the vehemence of Miss Woodbury’s emo- tion now. “Jack! Jack, dear!” she gasped. —I did it for—us!”’ “You did what?” ‘Planned it all, and it all seemed so clever!’’ Miss Woodbury wept suddenly, with complete abandon, so that her words were very wet and difficult to distinguish. ‘“‘T planned it all because he—he hated me —because I was in business, and—and had made a success of it and everything! I wanted to match wits with him and show him that areal advertising agent could beat any—any financier alive, even if she was a woman! ‘And it was so clever! It did seem so clever, and the place was so perfect! Why, even the little bridge down there!” gasped the stricken girl, and her tone grew won- dering. ‘‘I had them close it and put up the sign, so that the men I hired would have lots of room to get away with his car when it came, and make sure that he’d have to stay until I said he could go, and he admitted that he was licked, and that—” “Stop!” cried the younger Starr. ““ Stop! What’s it all about?” He shook her, too, causing Miss Wood- bury to take some control of herself. A heavy sob or two and she drew back. — “m—lI’m ashamed, but it—it was clever!”” she choked. “I sent him a note, -Jack—this morning. I told him to come here to-night for dinner, and that—that it was possible the matter of his son’s mar- riage to the—the girl he wouldn’t meet could be arranged to his satisfaction, and I signed it ‘ Jane Woodbury.’ Oh, it was abet | THE ARGOSY. horrible, I suppose, but he’s been so—so horribly nasty about me.” ““ He has been all of that,” said Angela’s brother coolly, and glanced at his father. ce Go on.”’ “ Well, that’s all, of course, except that I meant to—to get him here and be—like this,’ faltered Aunt Amanda’s tenant. “I sent away the cook for to-night, and two friends of mine were coming, although they backed out. And I meant to hide them and —and just serve dinner myself and then sit down with him and—and vamp him, Jack! No, not really—I don’t mean that! I mean that I’d have been leaning over the table and blowing cigarette smoke in his face when the other two appeared; and‘ they’d recognize him and call him by name and then—then go! And he’d be here alone with me, and I’d threaten him all sorts of things unless he wrote—wrote Helen Deston—me—a note saying that he had no objection at all to her marrying you, Jack!” “And after that?” the elder Starr queried, rather interestedly. Helen Deston glanced at him, and shrank closer to his son. “After that I—I meant to laugh at you, after I’d locked up the note, and tell you who I really was and that you weren’t nearly so clever as you thought, and that even a business girl—” She stopped. She shuddered suddenly and her lips trembled again. The necessity for acting was wholly past and Miss Deston very nearly her natural self again. ‘‘ Oh, it—it was hor- rible!” she cried. “I’m so ashamed— I—I.-—don’t know what to say!” She hid her face against young Mr. Starr’s coat. That gentleman stiffened. “You see what you drove her to!” he informed his parent. “And that’s the giri I called ‘ some scat- ter-brained little stenographer,’ is it?” his father smiled grimly. (79 Yes! 2 “Well, she isn’t scatter-brained, and she does seem rather devoted to you,” the older man muttered, and his smile grew less grim _as his keen gaze seemed to wander beneath the paint and penetrate nearer to the real Helen. ‘“‘ What spoiled the pretty litfle plot, my child?” cConnicoool.