“Get rid of that boob chaperon of yours!” gritted Barney.  “We’re going to have some real talk!”

Maggie stepped to the connecting door, sent Miss Grierson on an inconsequential errand, and returned.

“You’re looking as pleasant as if you were sitting for a new photograph, Barney.  What gives you that sweet expression?”

“You’ll cut out your comic-supplement stuff in just one second,” Barney warned her.  “We both saw young Sherwood awhile ago as he was leaving the Grantham, and he told us everything!”

Persiflage did indeed fail Maggie.  “Everything?” she exclaimed.  “What’s everything?”

“He told us about proposing to you almost a week ago, and about your refusing him.  And you lied to us—­kept us sitting round, wasting our time—­and all the while you’ve been double-crossing us!”

Those visitors from South and West, especially the women, who a few nights before on the roof had regarded Barney as the perfect courtier, would not have so esteemed him if they had seen him at the present moment.  He seized Maggie’s wrists, and all the evil of his violent nature glared from his small bright eyes.

“Damn you!” he cried.  “Jimmie, she’s yours, and a father’s got a right to do anything he likes to his own daughter.  Give it to her proper if she don’t come across with the truth!”

Jimmie stepped closer to her and bared his yellow teeth.  “I haven’t given you a basting since you were fifteen—­but I’ll paste you one right in the mouth if you don’t talk straight talk!”

“You hear that!” Barney gritted at her.  He believed there was justice in his wrath—­as indeed there was, of a sort.  “Think what Jimmie and I’ve put into this, in time and hard coin!  We’ve given you your chance, we’ve made you!  And then, after hard work and waiting and our spending so much, and everything comes out exactly as we figured, you go and throw us down—­not just yourself, but us and our rights!  Now you talk straight stuff!  Tell us, why did you refuse Sherwood when he proposed?  And why did you tell me that lie about his not proposing?”

Maggie realized she was in a desperate plight, with these two inflamed gazes upon her.  Never had she felt so little of a daughter’s liking for Old Jimmie as now when she looked into his lean, harsh, yellow-fanged face.  And she had no illusions about Barney.  He might love her, as she knew he did; but that would not be a check upon his ruthlessness if he thought himself balked or betrayed.

Just then her telephone began to ring.  She started to move toward it, but Barney’s grip checked her short.

“You’re going to answer me—­not any damned telephone!  Let it ring!”

The bell rang for a minute or two before it stilled its shrill clamor.  Its ringing was in a way a brief respite to Maggie, for it gave her additional time to consider what should be her course.  She realized that she dared not let Barney believe at this moment that she had turned against him.  Again she fell back upon her cool, self-confident manner.