No Nice Girl by Perry Lindsay Page B

before our marriage, instead of afterwards, isn’t it, darling?”
    Before he could manage an answer, she turned to Phyllis and said, smiling politely, “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse him now, Miss Gordon. After all, as his fiancée, I do have a few rights, and one is demanding that he keep his engagements with me regardless of his…his secret assignations with you.”
    There was nothing Phyllis could say. She could only get to her feet, her face burning scarlet, and, unable to look at either of them, to go out of the room and into her own office.
    Added to her bitter humiliation at being caught in such a situation by Letty, there was the pain of frustration. She had so nearly won her fight to spend a few golden hours in Kenyon’s arms. He had been intrigued; he had wanted her. He would have taken her—and perhaps then she might have been free of this aching need for him. Her emotion had flamedhigh and his had been rising to meet it, and to have Letty walk in at such a moment was an almost unbearable indignity.
    She rested her elbows on her desk and hid her white, emotion-ravaged face behind her shaking hands. The bitterness of her humiliation was almost more than she could bear, and added to it was the aching misery of a pride that was crumbled into dust.
    She had no way of knowing how long she sat there before the door opened, and she looked up to see Letty standing there, leaning her slim, elegant back against the closed door, studying Phyllis with a curious, puzzled look.
    â€œReally, Miss Gordon,” she said smoothly, “I don’t understand this at all. If you wanted an affair with Kenyon, and couldn’t find a better place to stage it than here in his office after hours, why telephone me and ask me to drop in? It sounds like some sort of a trap, though honestly I can’t see just what it could be.”
    Phyllis was staring at her in shocked amazement.
    â€œ I telephoned you? Mrs. Lawrence, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” she said at last.
    Letty looked more puzzled than ever.
    â€œWell, somebody telephoned me—a woman, with a very pleasant voice,” said Letty a trifle grimly. “And she said that if I dropped in at my fiancé’s office about eight o’clock, it might be interesting, and hung up before I could ask any questions. And, well, I wondered if maybe you could have staged the whole thing with some idiotic idea that if I caught Kenyon practically in the act of…shall we say seducing—with her full consent and cooperation—his priceless secretary, I might break the engagement and the secretary get a chance to marry Kenyon? That sounds pretty silly, I admit—and yet what other purpose could you have had?”
    â€œI never dreamed of such a thing—” stammered Phyllis, in abject humiliation.
    â€œNo, I don’t suppose you would, at that,” Letty observed thoughtfully. “But who in the world could have known that you and Kenyon were—well, planning something like this?”
    â€œThere was no plan. I mean it j-j-just happened,” stammered Phyllis.
    Letty laughed, a little, tinkling, cynical laugh, and shook her lovely head. The scent of the gardenias that banded that head touched Phyllis so that she felt never again would she smell them without being a little sickened.
    â€œOh, no, my dear—really, you belittle my intelligence,” through a fog of misery and embarrassment she heard Letty saying gently. “I’m not a child; I’m a woman of the world. I pride myself I’m even a bit sophisticated. I know men. I know Kenyon. He’s—well, perhaps he’s a bit of a fool where women are concerned, but I rather like that about him. I know that he’d never attempt to seduce a girl in his own office unless the girl gave him the ‘go-ahead’ signal. In fact,” she finished almost as though she spoke her