XXX
MAME had hardly committed half a dozen pregnant words to the efficient care of the ladylike girl at the post office, when suddenly she came to an important decision. Let her regularise the situation then and now. She would go straight home and clear up Lady Violet’s perplexities. Success had amply crowned her audacity, but there was still the uncomfortable feeling that she had played not quite fair. An explanation was overdue. Now was the time to make it.
The job was not easy to tackle. If it were done at all it must be done quickly. And so, immediately she got back from her errand, she plunged right in. Briefly and lightly as possible she made the confession.
“Do I understand you reopened the packet and put in what we had decided to leave out?” Lady Violet’s eyes grew wide and round. The change of tone was perceptible.
“I sure did. And there’s no call to be sorry.”
“Perhaps not, but there might have been.” Lady Violet’s slow voice deepened rather ominously while it made that comment.
“We took our chance and here we are.” Mame’sair of triumph was a shade uneasy; it sounded a trifle forced. “Now we’re in solid with New York. We’ve pulled the big stuff, you can tell the world.”
Lady Violet could not resist a laugh. But at the back of everything she was not laughing at all. She was rather sore. And she was rather angry. No use disguising it, there the feeling was. They had brought off a scoop of which they had every right to be proud. But somehow the whole thing was against her code. One could not help liking and admiring this girl, but the line would have to be drawn somewhere!
She looked at her ingenious partner with narrowing eyes. The note in her voice disconcerted Mame considerably, when she said, “I don’t quite think I can be in this.”
Mame had a pang, sharp and odd. She did not like the sound of that voice. Much less did she like the sound of the words. Lady Violet was absolutely indispensable to her now. Without her loyal help the contract could never be put through. And if she should cut loose and decide to turn her out of doors, as a girl with that look on her face conceivably might, the entire house of cards would collapse. Miss Du Rance was not yet established in anything. She would lose all she had gained. Society, at one word from Lady Violet, would fire her. Even her syndicate work would be lost. She would be back where she began.
Alarmed by that tone and that look Mame felt the cold touch of panic. She had made a hideous blunder. By a foolish miscalculation of human nature itseemed as if she had just spoiled everything. In the flush of success she had been over-confident. She ought to have remembered that high-grade folks differed in certain ways from the common run. Yes, she had been a little fool.