When Marise and Garth arrived together in Mrs. Sorel's salon, it was to find a "bunch" of reporters interviewing the bride's mother.

Marise guessed that Mums had had the young men up in order to tell them what she chose about Major Garth's future movements before Garth had time to arrive and speak for himself. But by these tactics she had lost the supporting presence of Lord Severance. Fearing his uncle, and perhaps even detectives set to spy upon him by Constantine Ionides, the last thing he could afford was to have his name appear in print in connection with this surprise wedding. Fearing reporters, he had not even come to the hotel door with Mrs. Sorel, but had gone with his Colonel to pay respects due to lady Pobblebrook; and this was well, for some sharp eye and stylo would have spotted him even in the background of a taxi.

Mums had not only approved, she had advised this prudence. Everything depended upon it, in fact; and she had soothed Tony by assuring him that she and Marise—or she alone—could deal with Garth if Garth were uppish and needed keeping in his place. It was arranged between Mrs. Sorel and Lord Severance that the latter should come to "Dolores's" dressing-room at the theatre to say good-bye, and Mums would see that he got a few minutes at least alone with Marise. Then, in a few weeks he would be back and they would meet again. Mrs. Sorel had provisionally accepted the loan of Bell Towers until he and Œnone should want the house for themselves, whereupon the Sorels could gracefully retire to some charming place they would hope to find in the neighbourhood.

Of course, this acceptance of Bell Towers must depend upon Marise leaving the stage: but Mums said that, if Tony were indeed shortly to be left a widower, the sooner Marise could be disassociated from the theatre, the better it would be for all concerned.

Thus it happened that when "Major and Mrs. Garth" walked into the room a few minutes after Mums' arrival, they found her as busy with a crowd of reporters as a conjurer who keeps a dozen oranges in the air at once.

Mary Sorel was chagrined at sight of her son-in-law.

Not that she thought of him as such, or as the husband of her daughter. She was a woman whom circumstances had forced to become unscrupulous. Ever since Marise had begun, as a flapper, to show signs of unusual beauty and talent, Mums had buckled on a steely armour in which to fight the world for her girl. Naturally conventional, she had adjusted a nice balance between ambition and conscience. When she was obliged to do a thing in itself objectionable, she hastily gilded it for her own benefit as well as that of Marise, seeing it as she wished it to be. Garth in her eyes, therefore, was no more important than one of the leading men with whom Marise played her star parts; and as—like a leading man—he was to be well paid, he would have no right to obtrude upon the star's private life.

She intended that, no matter how he protested, he should immediately be "called away"; and she had hoped to get just what she wanted scribbled into the notebooks of these reporters before Garth could interfere. Without feeling in the least guilty, therefore, she was upset when he had the bad taste to stalk in with Marise.

"Hello, boys!" he breezily greeted the newspaper men, some of whom he had met before.

They were delighted to see him, as well as Marise, and Mrs. Sorel's painstaking work went by the board in a minute. With rage and anguish she heard Garth say that when he "went West" (no longer in the sad vernacular of soldiers) his wife would go with him.

"She'll be leaving the stage, you know, as soon as she can manage to get free," he explained. "And then I'm going to take her out to my adopted state, Arizona."

His mother-in-law's interpolations that "it must be a long time first" were scarcely heard; and all her "exclusive information" was hurriedly blue-pencilled by the newspaper men. In the midst of this (to her) extremely painful scene, Sheridan and Belloc, author and manager, burst in like a couple of bombs. They had heard the news, and dashed to the Plaza in search of the truth.

"Well, I suppose we ought to congratulate you and all that," grumbled Belloc, when his worst fears had been confirmed by the sight of Garth, well known from journalistic snapshots. "We might have suspected something was in the wind, the way you've been an every-nighter for the 'Spring Song,' Major. But safety first!—and we can't be polite till we're out of the woods. You're not going to tear Miss Sorel away from us, of course, in the midst of the run?"

"Miss Sorel has ceased to exist, hasn't she?" asked Garth, with a rather glum smile.

"Not ceased to exist professionally." Belloc explained his meaning to the lay mind. "And I hope she won't cease for many years."

"If I can answer for her, she'll do no more acting after she's handed in her notice to you—two weeks, I suppose, like most contracts," Garth returned. "It's hard on you, in the middle of a run. But didn't I see in some Sunday supplement a photo of a beautiful young lady, labelled 'Miss Sorel's Understudy'? And as you say 'safety first!'—naturally I put my own safety before yours."

"As if anyone would go to the 'Spring Song' to see Marise's understudy!" broke out Mrs. Sorel.

"Well, in my 'Spring Song' there's no understudy to take her part. She has to play it herself," retorted Garth. "But I leave the decision to her."

As he spoke he looked straight at Marise—a warning look, as she read it. The thought of his threat was sharp as the point of a knife, pricking a painful reminder into her breast.

The girl could hear every word he had said to her in the taxi between church and hotel—hear the whole conversation as though it were being repeated by a gramophone. If she ventured to promise Belloc and Sheridan now that she would stay on in spite of her marriage, this big, uncompromising fellow would turn his back on her, giving to the public some garbled story of the desertion, a story which would shame her and ruin Tony's plans. She could have stamped her foot and burst into tears, as the emotional Spanish "Dolores" had to do in one scene of the play: but the reporters were all eyes and ears, and would simply "eat" an exhibition of the star's fury with her brand-new bridegroom. Oh, she was at the beast's mercy in this first round of their fight—and well he must know it, or he'd not dare give her such a lead!

"Of course Marise wouldn't leave two old friends in the lurch at a fortnight's notice," Mrs. Sorel gave her ultimatum. "This is only a joke of Major Garth's."

"No, Mums, I'm afraid it isn't," said the girl, her cheeks hot, her eyes filling with tears. "We—we were talking things over in the taxi just now, and—and—well anyhow there's a fortnight to get Susanne Neville into shape as Dolores before I have to—go. She's so clever and pretty, I shall probably be jealous as a cat of the hit she makes in 'Dolores.'"

Mrs. Sorel was stricken dumb for once. Not that she intended to let things fall to pieces in any such way; but she was sure Marise wouldn't pronounce what sounded like her own doom without reason. Mums would have it out with Marise and the Terrible Garth when everyone else had safely faded away.

The best she could do was to go herself to the vestibule door when the reporters left in a body and breathe a few words to them. "I wouldn't take all this as being definitely decided, if I were you. There may be a quick change. Better say that nothing's settled." And again, when Belloc and Sheridan gloomily departed, "Don't give up. I'll 'phone you later. There's sure to be better news!"

Returning, Mary Sorel the dauntless was surprised and disgusted to find herself vaguely afraid of the man she had despised. She had the same fear of him that one has of an impersonal force like electricity, which cannot be counted on, and of which little is known except that it may strike without considering one's feelings in the least. She tried to shake off the sensation, however, for the man had evidently hypnotised Marise in some secret, deadly way, perhaps by threats of violence. All was lost if she—Mary—did not keep her head.

She entered the salon, therefore, with a bustling air. "Now, Major Garth," she began, "I hope to hear the meaning of this—this ridiculous talk of my daughter throwing over her engagement and going West with you."

"She's thrown over one engagement in favour of another, hasn't she?" Garth inquired with his habitual quiet insolence. "If you asked the Reverend Mr. Jones, I think he'd say she had."

"I wish to ask no one anything about my daughter," Mrs. Sorel crushed the upstart. "I merely assert that it's time this nonsense ceased. It's gone disastrously far already."

"It's up to you and Marise to say how much further it shall go."

"'Marise'! Who gave you permission to call her Marise?"

Garth laughed. Even the girl uttered a faint hysterical giggle. It was rather funny to hear poor Mums ask that! But then Mums prided herself on having no vulgar sense of humour to interfere with justice.

"What would you like me to call her?" the man wanted to know. "'Miss Sorel' would be hardly proper now. And for a husband to call his wife 'Mrs. Garth' would be more suited, wouldn't it, to the lower circles I sprang from, than the high ones where she moves?"

Mary Sorel was reduced to heaving silence. As she bit her lip, Garth turned to Marise. "Would you prefer me to make things clear to your mother, or would you rather I'd go, and leave it to you?"

Marise snatched at the chance he gave. "Go, please," she answered quickly. "I'll—tell Mums what you—said in the taxi. She and I will talk things over, and—and I'll see you again to-morrow or sometime."

"Or sometime," he echoed.

The girl expected him to remind her rudely of the bridal suite he had engaged in the hotel, but he did not. He took up his smart Guards cap, laid the handsome lavender-grey overcoat on his arm, and went to the door. "Au revoir," he said, pronouncing his French remarkably well for a man of the lower stratum. Then, without a word as to the next meeting, in spite of all his threats, he was gone.

What did it mean? Marise asked herself. Had he been bluffing? Or had he seen the monstrous folly of terrorising her? She would have given much to know. Perhaps he guessed that!

Ostentatiously Mums flew to lock the door. She locked it loudly, and running back took Marise into her arms. "My poor child!" she wailed. "What has he done to you? You are like a dove with a snake!"

Strange, that in a turmoil of anger and dread as she was, Marise was continually wanting to laugh! The thought of herself as a fluttering dove and the big, brutal Garth as a sinuous snake was comic! But there was, alas, nothing else comic in the situation, and she explained it as she saw it, while Mums punctuated each sentence with moans.

"It's awful!" sighed Mary at last. "But there's nothing really to be feared, so we must cheer up. Our protection is that this fellow's poor as a church rat (I can't call him a mouse!). When it comes to the point he will have to toe the mark, and keep to his bargain——"

"Ah, that's it!" cried Marise. "He says through my action the bargain is off. He wouldn't explain what he meant: said I'd see for myself sooner or later. But I don't see yet. Do you?"

"I do not, indeed. I believe it's only more wicked bluff on his part. He talks of taking you West with him. What does he expect you to live on? Your own money? He hasn't got his million dollars yet, and he'll lose the lot unless he behaves himself," Mums laid down the law. "For goodness' sake, though, don't complain to Tony of the creature's threats! Tony would fight him—kill him, perhaps. What a sickening scandal! No, you've made an appalling mistake by marrying Garth before you needed to do so, and giving him a hold over you just as Tony is going so far away. But you can take care of yourself—or if you can't I can take care of you. As for this suite the man boasts about, I'll 'phone down now to the manager and question him. If it adjoins this, as it probably does—that would have been arranged if possible, no doubt—why, everything will be simple enough."

Marise did not answer. She was beginning to think that nothing was quite simple where Garth was concerned.