She raised her voice so that Franklin should hear her. "I would willingly and without any argument be sent to the backwoods for a year if I'd made a fool of myself with a man like Sutherland York. He was never anything more to me than a poseur and a freak, and as such he amused me. But what will you and all these people with nasty minds say if I tell you that I had every right to pay midnight visits to the man who lived in the studio opposite to York's, and if there is anything attaching to our name it is not scandal, but romance?"
Franklin wheeled round. What on earth was the girl trying to suggest to save her skin?
An amazing change came over the three accusers. They all knew that Franklin's rooms were in the same building as York's,--Franklin, the man whom they would rather see married into their family than anyone alive.
"W-what d'you mean?" cried Mr. Vanderdyke, stammering in his eagerness.
Mrs. Vanderdyke lost her perfect reserve for once and grasped her daughter's arm. "Tell us! Tell us!" she cried.
Over Aunt Honoria's face the beginning of a new understanding came. "What is this right, Beatrix?" she asked. "What is it?"
Beatrix came to the jump, rose to it and cleared it at a bound, with every drop of blood in her lovely body tingling with excitement and a glorious sense of being alive, being beautiful, being able to carry everything before her. She was leaping from one scrape to another, but in this one she was dealing with a sportsman who would help her somehow.
"The right," she said, throwing up her head, "of a girl who goes to see the man to whom she has been secretly married."
She rose, and with exquisite shyness and her fair skin touched with the color that nature paints upon the petals of apple blossoms, went across to Franklin and ran her hand through his arm.
In her relief at being able to put a stop to the ugly story which coupled the names of Beatrix Vanderdyke and Sutherland York, Aunt Honoria,--who invariably took the lead in all matters relating to her family,--not only at once gave out to the house-party the news of the romantic marriage of her niece and Pelham Franklin, but, with her characteristic thoroughness, called up the editor of the New York _Times_ and gave it to him for immediate publication. In her mind's eye she saw the front page of the next day's issue setting forth under big headlines, with photographs of the happy couple, an elaborate account of the wealth and importance of the families of Vanderdyke and Franklin. This would be taken up and spun out by all the other papers in the country, and then, she rejoiced to know, would be killed the insidious scandal with which the family name had been connected to the horror and pain of all who bore it.