She stood up.  “Wait a minute,” she said as Maggie started for the door.  Maggie turned back, and for another moment the Duchess silently peered deep into Maggie’s eyes.  Then she said shortly, almost sharply:  “At your age I was twice as pretty as you are—­and twice as clever—­ and I played much the same game.  Look what I got out of life! . . .  Good-night.”  And abruptly the Duchess wheeled about and mounted the stairway.

Twenty minutes later Maggie was back at the Grantham, her absence unobserved.  Though palpitant over Larry’s fate, she had the satisfaction of having achieved with Larry’s grandmother what she had set forth to achieve.  She did not know, could not know, that what she had accepted as her achievement was inconsequential compared to what had actually been achieved by her spontaneous appearance before the troubled Duchess.

CHAPTER XXIX

As the Duchess had gazed into Maggie’s excited, imploring eyes, it had been borne in upon her carefully judging and painfully hesitant mind that there was better than a fifty per cent chance that Larry was right in his estimate of Maggie; that Maggie’s inclination toward criminal adventure, her supreme self-confidence, all her bravado, were but the superficial though strong tendencies developed by her unfortunate environment; that within that cynical, worldly shell there were the vital and plastic makings of a real woman.

And so the long-troubled Duchess, who to her acquaintances had always seemed as unemotional as the dust-coated, moth-eaten parrot which stood in mummified aloofness upon her safe, had made a momentous decision that had sent through her old veins the thrilling sap of a great crisis, a great suspense.  She had tried to guide destiny.  She was now through with such endeavor.  She had no right, because of her love for Larry, to withhold longer the facts of Maggie’s parentage.  She was now going to tell the truth, and let events work out as they would.

But the events—­what were they going to be?

For a moment the Duchess had been impelled to tell the truth straight out to Maggie.  But she had caught herself in time.  This whole affair was Larry’s affair, and the truth belonged to him to be used as he saw fit.  So when she had told Maggie that she would get word to Larry, it was this truth which she had had in mind, and only in a very minor way the news which Maggie had brought.

This was, of course, such a truth as could be safely communicated only by word of mouth.  The Duchess realized that Larry no longer dared come to her, and that therefore she must manage somehow to get to him.  And get to him without betraying his whereabouts.