Everybody waited again.  Martha Wallingford sat so still that she gave the impression of a doll made without speaking apparatus.  It did not seem as if she could even wink.  Then Alice Mendon, who disliked Margaret Edes and had a shrewd conjecture as to the state of affairs, but who was broad in her views, pitied Margaret.  She arose with considerable motion and spoke to Daisy Shaw at her right, and broke the ghastly silence, and immediately everything was in motion and refreshments were being passed, but Martha Wallingford, who had written Hearts Astray, was not there to partake of them.  She was in her room, huddled in a chair upholstered with cream silk strewn with roses; and she was in one of the paroxysms of silent rage which belonged to her really strong, although undisciplined nature, and which was certainly in this case justified to some degree.

“It was an outrage,” she said to herself.  She saw through it all now.  She had refused to speak or to read before all those women’s clubs and now this woman had trapped her, that was the word for it, trapped her.

As she sat there, her sullenly staring angry eyes saw in large letters at the head of a column in a morning paper on the table beside her, “‘The Poor Lady,’ the greatest anonymous novel of the year.”

Then she fell again to thinking of her wrongs and planning how she should wreak vengeance upon Margaret Edes.

Chapter VI

Martha Wallingford was a young person of direct methods.  She scorned subterfuges.  Another of her age and sex might have gone to bed with a headache, not she.  She sat absolutely still beside her window, quite in full view of the departing members of the Zenith Club, had they taken the trouble to glance in that direction, and some undoubtedly did, and she remained there; presently she heard her hostess’s tiny rap on the door.  Martha did not answer, but after a repeated rap and wait, Margaret chose to assume that she did, and entered.  Margaret knelt in a soft flop of scented lingerie beside the indignant young thing.  She explained, she apologised, she begged, she implored Martha to put on that simply ravishing gown which she had worn the evening before; she expatiated at length upon the charms of the people whom she had invited to dinner, but Martha spoke not at all until she was quite ready.  Then she said explosively, “I won’t.”

She was silent after that.  Margaret recognised the futility of further entreaties.  She went down stairs and confided in Wilbur.  “I never saw such an utterly impossible girl,” she said; “there she sits and won’t get dressed and come down to dinner.”

“She is a freak, must be, most of these writer people are freaks,” said Wilbur sympathetically.  “Poor old girl, and I suppose you have got up a nice dinner too.”

“A perfectly charming dinner and invited people to meet her.”

“How did she do her stunt this afternoon?”