Once during the morning, he slipped from the library into his room and
gazed at the portrait of Maggie that Hunt had given him the night
before: Maggie, self-confident, willful, a beautiful nobody who was
staring the world out of countenance; a Maggie that was a thousand
possible Maggies. And as he gazed he thought of the wager he had made
with Hunt, and of his own rather scatter-brained plannings concerning
it. He removed Maggie's portrait from the fellowship of the picture of
the Italian mother, and hid it in his chiffonier. Whatever he might do
in his endeavor to make good his boast to Hunt, for the present he
would regard Maggie's portrait as his private property. To use the
painting as he had vaguely planned, before he had been surprised to
find it Maggie's portrait, would be to pass it on into other
possession where it might become public--where, through some chance,
the Maggie of the working-girl's cheap shirt-waist might be identified
with the rich Miss Cameron of the Grantham, to Maggie's great
discomfiture, and possibly to her entanglement with the police.
When Miss Sherwood came into the library a little later, Larry tried
to put Maggie and all matters pertaining to his previous night's
adventure out of his mind. He had enough other affairs which he was
trying adroitly to handle--for instance, Miss Sherwood and Hunt; and
when his business talk with her was ended, he remarked:
"I saw Mr.
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