Color flamed in her cheeks and she imperiously rose. “I
“I will take you up on that at once, Marion,” I told her angrily, for I could not much longer contain my irascibility at these insulting charges. “If indeed there is anything which stands between Alice and myself towards the ultimate happiness of wedlock, it is your own perspicacious determination to set us apart and to make us at odds with each other as you did before. But I have effected this reconciliation and I think that Alice is now wise enough and mature enough in her own emotions as a woman to be no longer influenced by your shrewish whimsies and pronouncements. By what right, I now ask you, do you dare to come into my apartment and to insult me with the epithet of vile seducer and adventurer? What do you know of me except perhaps that which you may have heard by rumor only, since only this day do we first meet face to face?”
At this, Marion tossed her head in high dudgeon and then darting me a look of implacable distaste she haughtily responded: “I see that it is utterly useless, sir, to prolong this discussion further. It is a great mistake for me to have come at all, for I consider you unregenerate and determined to offend me with the tone and tenure of your remarks. I shall ask you, therefore, to show me to the door, and I will take my leave of you. I can only hope that my poor sister comes off better than I begin to believe she will, once having returned to you. But you may be sure that I shall counsel her to the utmost of my abilities to make a complete break with you, sir, and to find herself a gentleman of greater courtesy and proper demeanor when in the presence of the tender sex.”
Her formal and, indeed, sanctimonious speech almost made me burst out laughing. She was still a very young woman, for all her marital adventure, and yet she dared to set herself up as a kind of sermonizer, a veritable Mrs. Grundy, who characterized and labeled that which displeased her as necessarily being false and meretricious. Decidedly what Marion needed was being pulled down abruptly and rudely from the preening pedestal on which she had so vauntedly perched herself. And I knew precisely how to bring about that downfall in the Snuggery!
“Why, my dear Marion,” I said as blandly as I could, “I deeply regret your hasty conclusion about my motives and my character. I wish you would allow me to demonstrate to you a greater and more reassuring proof that I have only the warmest regard for you just as I have for dear Alice.”
You may well conclude, dear reader, that I was not at all mendacious in telling Marion this: for, after all, the attentions which I intended to show her forthwith were as warm as any female, however pretentious or regal of degree, could dream of. And this as quickly as possible! Yes, I was fairly itching to undress the haughty and arrogant older sister of my beloved Alice, to find where the veneer ended and the woman began, where the secret emotions which were bottled up under the elegant gown and the overly modest altogether could be probed and brought to the surface. In a word, dear reader, now more than ever I had determined to make haughty Marion pay dearly for having flouted and insulted me in my own quarters. She had come as a welcome guest, only to pay me back with acid and vinegar for the sweet mead of friendship which I had offered to her.
This little speech of mine did not in the least dissuade her from her intention to leave my apartment without further ado. “You will show me to the door, I trust,” she said with a sniff, as she drew herself up to her full stature.
“Of course I will, dear Marion.” I smiled as I took her arm and inclined my head in the most humbly deferential of gestures. Even duchesses of the blood royal would have been satisfied with my observance of gallant protocol.
“I did not ask for the support of your arm, sir,” she gave me a glacial look as she promptly disengaged her rounded arm, while a look of annoyance made her cheeks flush with anger. “Merely come with me and see that I am properly out of your abode, inside which I never mean to set foot again.”
Now, to the right of my sitting room on which the main door to my apartment opens, was the door of the Snuggery. It had doors at each end, and the room was nearly square, of an excellent size and quite lofty. The walls, however, were unbroken, save by the one entrance, as light and air came in from a lantern which occupied the greater part of the roof, and was supported by four strong and stout wooden pillars. The walls were thickly padded, with iron rings let into them at regular distances all around in two rows, one close to the floor and the other about a height of eight feet. From the roof beams dangled rope pulleys in pairs between the pillars; while the two recesses on the entrance side which were caused by the projection of the passage into the room looked as if they had at once time been separated from the rest of the room by bars, as if they were cells at one time. This of course, as I have already indicated and which information I gathered from my landlord at the time when he let my rooms, had come about because the house had initially been used as a private asylum for the mentally unbalanced. It was grim, ironic justice, I thought, that Marion should now make the acquaintance of the Snuggery, because in my estimation she was emotionally unbalanced! I had had the floor covered with thick Persian carpets and rugs, and the two alcoves converted into nominal photographic laboratories, but in a way that had made them suitable for lavatories and dressing rooms. As it now appeared-just as it had to dear Alice-it seemed a most pretty and comfortable room where one could chat in quiet and take a glass of port Of course, it was actually an admirably disguised torture chamber.
I had, in advance of Marion’s coming this afternoon, placed a pair of black velvet drapes over the door entering this secret chamber, and I now adroitly led the way towards to that draped entry rather than to my front door. I was able to do this principally because Marion was still reacting from her choler towards me, and did not notice that instead of taking a straight line to the front door through a little antechamber, she was in reality turning slightly to the right and finding herself against the draped entranceway. I quickly whisked aside the drapes, put my hand to the knob of the door and flung it open, and, with a haughty toss of her head, she passed, not across the little antechamber door, but rather over into that room which was to spell her ultimate downfall and surrender!
Chapter 3
No sooner had Marion crossed the threshold than I closed the door and turned a secret spring lock, artfully concealed to one side of a mechanism of the regular knob and lock I had had this installed shortly after my conquest of dear Alice, and possibly it was a stroke of Providence which had furnished the inspiration. Perhaps subconsciously I had always dreamed of subjugating and mastering haughty Marion, and this little mechanism would aid me greatly in making the dream now come true!
She glanced around, and then turned to face me, a look of indignation plainly written on her beautiful, insolent features: “Where have you taken me, sir? I told you I wanted to be quits of you, and yet you have led me into another room. Is this part of your trickery and cunning?”
“No, it is part of yours,” I said coldly to her, and it amused me to see her recoil and her face turn crimson with anger at this audacious and discourteous retort.
“How dare you!” she drew herself up to her full height, her eyes flashing daggers of enmity at me.
“It appears, Marion, that a man must dare a great deal to overcome your intolerably detestable nature. Even if I had been furnished no details whatsoever, I should be able to conclude for my own analysis of your personality exactly why your husband found it necessary to leave your bed and board,” I said with a casual shrug.
She uttered a little cry and then, taking a step forward, slapped me across the cheek. It was a smart, stinging blow, and my eyes widened with delighted surprise. Now she had really added to her account; in fact, she would need an extra page just for that one mark of disfavor in our little ledger. It was already looming into quite a debt.
“Good!” I said, “because now we can be on equal terms. You have insulted me, you have deprecated and disparaged my character without reason or cause, and now you strike me simply because I am candid enough to tell you that it is unfair of you to use your sex as an immunity. If you were a man, Marion, and had dared titter a third of these irritating syllables you have already uttered in my presence, to say nothing of this last courtesy of yours, you would already have merited a sound thrashing with my fists, if not at worst a challenge to a duel. But since you are
