"
"Really--I'd rather be excused."
"Really," she mocked pleasantly, "you won't be. I'm a gentle creature
but determined--frail but firm, you know. Perhaps you've heard of
me--Mrs. Jefferson Inche?"
Decidedly he had; and so had nine-tenths of New York's
newspaper-reading population. His eyes widened with new interest.
"Truly?" he said, civilly responsive to the challenge in her
announcement. "But _I_ never knew Mrs. Jefferson Inche was beautiful."
"It needs a beautiful woman to be known as the most dangerous in
Town," she explained with modest pride.
"But--ah--Mr. Inche, I understand, died some years ago."
"So he did."
"Yet you speak of your husband--?"
"Of my present husband, whose name I don't wear for reasons of
real-estate. I took the rotter on because he's rich and will be richer
when his father dies; he married me because he was rotten and I had
the worst reputation he could discover. So we're quits _there_. If our
marriage comes out prematurely, he'll be disinherited; so we've agreed
to a _sub-rosa_ arrangement which leaves him, ostensibly, a marketable
bachelor. Now, I happen to know a marriage has recently been offered
him through which he would immediately come into control of a big pot
of money, and naturally he's strong for it. But I refused his offer of
a cool half-million to play the Reno circuit, and so he concluded to
sue for a divorce with a revolver, a Maxim silencer, and a perfect
alibi.
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