Women have a code of their own, a system of signals, a lip and sign language perfectly intelligible among themselves, but mystifying, as they purpose it to be, to mere man. Overweening husbands, with a fine air of letting the cat out of the bag, have been known to whisper that these carefully guarded secrets are no secrets at all, and that women are merely children of a larger growth, playing at hide and seek with one another (and with their common enemy) for the mere love of the game, that there are no mysteries in their natures to be solved, and that the vaunted woman’s instinct, like the child’s, is as apt to be wrong as often as it is right. Of course, no one believes this, and even if one did, man would go his way and woman hers. Woman would continue to believe in the accuracy of her intuitions and man would continue to marvel at them. Woman would continue to play at hide and seek, and man would continue to enjoy the game.

Call them by what name you please, instinct, intuition, or guesswork, Mrs. Richard Pennington had succeeded by methods entirely feminine, in discovering that Phil Gallatin’s Dryad was Jane Loring, that he was badly in love with her and that Jane was not indifferent to his attentions. Phil Gallatin had not been difficult to read, and Mrs. Pennington took a greater pride in the discovery of Jane’s share in the romance, for she knew when Jane left[178] her house in company with Phil that her intuition had not erred.

Jane Loring had kissed her on both cheeks and called her “odious.”

This in itself was almost enough, but to complete the chain of evidence, she learned that Dawson, her head coachman, in the course of execution of her orders, had gone as far North as 125th Street before his unfortunate mistake of Miss Loring’s number had been discovered by the occupants of the brougham.

Mrs. Pennington realized that this last bit of evidence had been obtained at the expense of a breach of hospitality, for she was not a woman who made a practice of talking with her servants, but she was sure that the ends had justified the means and the complete success of her maneuver more than compensated for her slight loss of self-respect in its accomplishment.

But while her discovery pleased her, she was not without a sense of responsibility in the matter. She had been hoping for a year that a girl of the right kind would come between Phil and the fate he seemed to be courting, for since his mother’s death he had lived alone, and seclusion was not good for men of his habits. She had wanted Phil to meet Jane Loring, and her object in bringing them together had been expressed in a definite hope that they would learn to like each other a great deal. But now that she knew what their relations were, she was slightly oppressed by the thought of unpleasant possibilities.

It was in the midst of these reflections that Miss Jaffray was announced, and in a moment she entered the room with a long half-mannish, half-feline stride and took up her place before the mantelpiece where she stood, her feet apart, toasting her back at the open fire. Mrs. Pennington indicated the cigarettes, and Nina Jaffray took[179] one, rolling it in her fingers and tapping the end of it on her wrist to shake out the loose dust as a man would do.

“I’m flattered, Nina,” said Nellie Pennington. “To what virtue of mine am I indebted for the earliness of this visit?”

“I slept badly,” said Nina laconically.

“And I’m the anodyne? Thanks.”

“Oh, no; merely an antidote.”

“For what?”

“Myself. I’ve got the blues.”

“You! Impossible.”

“Oh, yes. It’s quite true. I’m quite wretched.”

“Dressmaker or milliner?”

“Neither. Just bored, I think. You know I’ve been out five years now. Think of it! And I’m twenty-four. Isn’t that enough to make an angel weep?”

“It’s too sad to mention,” said Mrs. Pennington. “You used to be such a nice little thing, too.”

Nina Jaffray raised a hand in protest.

“Don’t, Nellie, it’s no joke, I can tell you. I’m not a nice little thing any longer, and I know it. I’m a hoydenish, hard-riding, loud-spoken vixen, and that’s the truth. I wish I was a ‘nice little thing’ as you call it, like Jane Loring for instance, with illusions and hopes and a proclivity for virtue. I’m not. I like the talk of men——”

“That’s not unnatural—so do I.”

“I mean the talk of men among men. They interest me, more what they say than what they are. They’re genuine, somehow. You can get the worst and the best of them at a sitting. One can’t do that with women. Most of us are forever purring and pawing and my-dearing one another when we know that what we want to do is to spit and claw. I like the easy ways of men—collectively,[180] Nellie, not individually, and I’ve come and gone among them because it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. I’ve made a mistake. I know it now. When a girl gets to be ‘a good fellow’ she does it at the expense either of her femininity or her morals. And men make the distinction without difficulty. I’m ‘a good fellow,’” she said scornfully, “and I’m decent. Men know it, but they know, too, that I have no individual appeal. Why only last week at the Breakfast the Sackett boy clapped me on the back and called me ‘a jolly fine chap.’ I put him down, I can tell you. I’d rather he’d called me anything—anything—even something dreadful—if it had only been feminine.”

She flicked her cigarette into the fire and dropped into a chair.

Mrs. Pennington laughed.

“All this is very unmanly of you, Nina.”

“Oh, I’m not joking. You’re like the others. Just because I’ve ridden through life with a light hand, you think I’m in no danger of a cropper. Well, I am. I’ve had too light a hand, and I’m out in the back-stretch with a winded horse. You didn’t make that mistake, Nellie. Why couldn’t you have warned me?”

Mrs. Pennington held off the embroidery frame at arm’s length and examined it with interest.

“You didn’t ask me to, Nina,” she replied quietly.

“No, I didn’t. I never ask advice. When I do, it’s only to do the other thing. But you might have offered it just the same.”

“I might have, if I knew you wouldn’t have followed it.”

“No,” reflectively. “I think I’d have done what you said. I like you immensely, you know, Nellie. You’re a good sort—besides being everything I’m not.”

[181]

“Meaning—what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You’re all woman, for one thing.”

“I have had two children,” smiled the other toward the ceiling. “I could hardly be anything else.”

“Is that it?” asked the visitor; and then after a pause, “I don’t like children.”

“Not other people’s. You’d adore your own.”

“I wonder.”

Mrs. Pennington’s pretty shoulders gave an expressive shrug.

“Marry, my dear. Nothing defines one’s sex so accurately. Marry for love if you can, marry for money if you must, but marry just the same. You may be unhappy, but you’ll never be bored.”

Nina Jaffray gazed long into the fire.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “That’s what I came to see you about.”

“Oh, Nina, I’m delighted!” cried Nellie Pennington genuinely, “and so flattered. Who, my dear child?”

“I’ve been thinking—seriously.”

“You must have had dozens of offers.”

“Oh, yes, from fortune hunters and gentlemen jockeys, but I’m not a philanthropic institution. Curiously enough my taste is quite conventional. I want a New Yorker—a man with a mind—with a future, perhaps, neither a prig nor a rake—human enough not to be too good, decent enough not to be burdensome—a man with weaknesses, if you like, a poor man, perhaps——”

“Nina. Who?”

Miss Jaffray paused.

“I thought I’d marry Phil Gallatin,” she said quietly.

Mrs. Pennington laid her embroidery frame down and looked up quickly. Nina Jaffray’s long legs were extended toward the blaze, but her head was lowered and her[182] eyes gazed steadily before her. It was easily to be seen that she was quite serious—more serious than Mrs. Pennington liked.

“Phil Gallatin! Oh, Nina, you can’t mean it?”

“I do. There isn’t a man in New York I’d rather marry than Phil.”

“Does he know it?”

“No. But I mean that he shall.”

“Don’t be foolish. You two would end in the ditch in no time.”

Nina straightened and examined her hostess calmly.

“Do you think so?” she asked at last.

“Yes, I think so——” Nellie Pennington paused, and whatever it was that she had in mind to say remained unspoken. Instinct had already warned her that Nina was the kind of girl who is only encouraged by obstacles, and it was not her duty to impose them.

“Stranger things have happened, Nellie,” she laughed.

“But are you sure Phil will—er—accept you?”

“Oh, no, and I shan’t be discouraged if he refuses,” she went on oblivious of Nellie Pennington’s humor.

“Then you do mean to speak to him?”

“Of course.” Nina’s eyes showed only grave surprise at the question. “How should he know it otherwise?”

“Your methods are nothing, if not direct.”

“Phil would never guess unless I told him. For a clever man he’s singularly stupid about women. I think that’s why I like him. Why shouldn’t I tell him? What’s the use of beating around the bush? It’s such a waste of time and energy.”

Mrs. Pennington’s laugh threw discretion to the winds.

“Oh, Nina, you’ll be the death of me yet. There never was such a passion since the beginning of Time.”

[183]

“I didn’t say I loved Phil Gallatin,” corrected Nina promptly. “I said I’d decided to marry him.”

“And have you any reason to suppose that he shares your—er—nubile emotions?”

“None whatever. He has always been quite indifferent to me—to all women. I think the arr............