stion. Besides, he felt
himself somehow responsible. He had given back to her the gift of life,
which she had rejected. Surely, he had the right to know the truth.

It seemed that Mary believed her confidence his due, for she told him
the fact.

"I have been working and scheming for nearly a year to do it," she said,
with a hardening of her face that spoke of indomitable resolve. "Now,
it's done." A vindictive gleam shot from her violet eyes as she added:
"It's only the beginning, too."

Garson, with the keen perspicacity that had made him a successful
criminal without a single conviction to mar his record, had seized the
implication in her statement, and now put it in words.

"Then, you won't leave us? We're going on as we were before?" The hint
of dejection in his manner had vanished. "And you won't live with him?"

"Live with him?" Mary exclaimed emphatically. "Certainly not!"

Aggie's neatly rounded jaw dropped in a gape of surprise that was most
unladylike.

"You are going to live on in this joint with us?" she questioned,
aghast.

"Of course." The reply was given with the utmost of certainty.

Aggie presented the crux of the matter.

"Where will hubby live?"

There was no lessening of the bride's composure as she replied, with a
little shrug.

"Anywhere but here."

Aggie suddenly giggled. To her sense of humor there was something vastly
diverting in this new scheme of giving bliss to a fond husband.

"Anywhere but here," she repeated gaily. "Oh, won't that be nice--for
him? Oh, yes! Oh, quite so! Oh, yes, indeed--quite so--so!"

Garson, however, was still patient in his determination to apprehend
just what had come to pass.

"Does he understand the arrangement?" was his question.

"No, not yet," Mary admitted, without sign of embarrassment.

"Well," Aggie said, with another giggle, "when you do get around to tell
him, break it to him gently."

Garson was intently considering another phase of the situation, one
suggested perhaps out of his own deeper sentiments.

"He must think a lot of you!" he said, gravely. "Don't he?"

For the first time, Mary was moved to the display of a slight confusion.
She hesitated a little before her answer, and when she spoke it was in a
lower key, a little more slowly.

"I--I suppose so."

Aggie presented the truth more subtly than could have been expected from
her.

"Think a lot of you? Of course he does! Thinks enough to marry you! And
believe me, kid,