Constantly he was seeing the transformed Maggie in the
cerise evening gown with the fan of green plumes--seeing her elaborate
setting in her suite at the Grantham--hearing that vaguely familiar
but unplaceable voice outside her door--recalling the frenzied effort
with which Maggie had so swiftly effected his escape.
This last matter puzzled him greatly. If she were so angered at him as
she had declared, if she so distrusted him, why had she not given him
up when she had had him at her mercy? Could it be that, despite her
words, she had an unacknowledged liking for him? He did not dare let
himself believe this.
Again and again he thought of this adventure in whose very middle
Maggie now was, and of whose successful issue she had proudly boasted
to him. It was indeed something big, as she had said; that
establishment at the Grantham was proof of this. Larry could now
perceive the adventure's general outlines. There was nothing original
in what he perceived; and the plan, so far as he could see it, would
not have interested him in the least as a novel creation of the brain
were not Maggie its central figure, and were not Barney and Old Jimmie
her directing agents. A pretty woman was being used as a lure to some
rich man, and his infatuation for her was to cause him to part with a
great deal of money: some variation of this ancient idea, which has a
thousand variations--that was the plan.
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