Beyond her relief at this escape she did not know these first few minutes what she thought or felt.  Too much had happened, and what had happened had all turned out so differently from what she had expected, for her to set in orderly array this chaos of reactions within herself and read the meaning of that afternoon’s visit.  She managed, with a great effort, to keep under control the outer extremities of her senses, and thus respond with the correct “yes” or “no” or “indeed” when some response from her was required by Dick’s happy conversation.

Near Roslyn they swung off the turnpike into an unfrequented, shady road.  Dick steered to one side beneath a locust-tree and silenced the motor.

“Why are you stopping?” she asked in sudden alarm.

“So we can talk without a piece of impertinent machinery roaring interruptions at us,” replied Dick with forced lightness.  And then in a voice he could not make light:  “I want to talk to you about—­about my sister.  Isn’t she splendid?”

“She is!” There was no wavering of her thoughts as Maggie emphatically said this.

“I’m mighty glad you like her.  She certainly liked you.  She’s all the family I’ve got, and since you two hit it off so well together I hope—­I hope, Maggie—­”

And then Dick plunged into it, stammeringly, but earnestly.  He told her how much he loved her, in old phrases that his boyish ardor made vibrantly new.  He loved her!  And if she would marry him, her influence would make him take the brace all his friends had urged upon him.  She’d make him a man!  And she could see how pleased it would make his sister.  And he would do his best to make Maggie happy—­his very best!

The young super-adventuress—­she herself had mentally used the word “adventuress” in thinking of herself, as being more genteel and mentally aristocratic than the cruder words by which Barney and Old Jimmie and their kind designated a woman accomplice—­this young super-adventuress, who had schemed all this so adroitly, and worked toward it with the best of her brain and her conscious charm, was seized with new panic as she listened to the eager torrent of his imploring words, as she gazed into the quivering earnestness of his frank, blue-eyed face.  She wished she could get out of the machine and run away or sink through the floor-boards of the car.  For she really liked Dick.

“I’m—­I’m not so good as you think,” she whispered.  And then some unsuspected force within her impelled her to say:  “Dick, if you knew the truth—­”

He caught her shoulders.  “I know all the truth about you I want to know!  You’re wonderful, and I love you!  Will you marry me?  Answer that.  That’s all I want to know!”