“Oh, I couldn’t,” Magsie said, quite the dutiful daughter.  “She’s a wonderful person; she’s arranging for our own private car, and a cook, and I may take Anna if I can get her!”

“All righto!” agreed Billy.

A rather speculative look came into her face as the other car whirled away.  She suddenly gave directions to the driver.

“Drive to Miss Clay’s apartment, where you picked me up this morning, Hungerford!” she said quickly.  “I—­I think I left something there—­gloves—­”

“I wonder if you would let me into Miss Clay’s apartment?” she said to the beaming janitor’s wife fifteen minutes later.  “Miss Clay isn’t here, and I left my gloves in her rooms.”

Something in Magsie’s manner had made her feel that Magsie had good reason for keeping the name of her admirer hid.  Billy had felt for weeks that she would know the name if Magsie ever divulged it.  And this morning she had noticed the admission that the wronged wife was a beautiful woman—­and the hesitation with which Magsie had answered “Two girls.”  Then Magsie had said that she would “write him,” not at all the natural thing to do to a man one was sure to see, and Rachael had said that Warren was away!  But most significant of all was her answer to Billy’s question as to whether the children were grown.  Magsie had admitted that she knew the wife, had “known her before,” and yet she pretended not to know whether or not the children were grown.  Billy had had just a fleeting idea of Warren Gregory before that, but this particular term confirmed the suspicion suddenly.

So while Magsie was getting her marriage license, Billy was in Magsie’s apartment turning over the contents of her wastepaper basket in feverish haste.  The envelope was ruined, it had been crushed while wet; a name had been barely started anyway.  But here was the precious scrap of commencement, “My dearest Greg—­”

Billy was almost terrified by the discovery.  There it was, in irrefutable black and white.  She stuffed it back into the basket, and left the house like a thief, panting for the open air.  A suspicion only ten minutes before, now she felt as if no other fact on earth had ever so fully possessed her.  For an hour she drove about in a daze.  Then she went home, and sat down at her desk, and wrote the following letter: 

“Mv dear Rachael:  The letter with the darling little ‘B’ came yesterday.  I think he is cute to learn to write his own letter so quickly.  Tell him that mother is proud of him for picking so many blackberries, and will love the jam.  It is as hot as fire here, and the park has that steamy smell that a hothouse has.  I have been driving about in Joe Butler’s car all afternoon.  We are going to Long Beach to-night.

“Rachael—­Magsie Clay and a man named Richard Gardiner were married this afternoon.  He is an invalid or something; he is at St. Luke’s Hospital, and she and his mother are going to take him to California at once.  What do you know about that?  Of course this is a secret, and for Heaven’s sake, if you tell anybody this, don’t say I gave it away.