Part 120

“Do you blame me for being suspicious in regard to what you intend to say to my father?” she demanded. “I tell you frankly that I came here looking for you. We must settle our affair.”

“I am trying to get word with him about my own business--simply my own business, Miss Marston.”

“But as to me! What are you going to say to him about me? You remember I told you that I intended to protect myself,” she declared, with some insolence.

“I thought you had a better opinion of me,” he protested. “Miss Marston, as far as I am concerned, you never were on that schooner. I know nothing about you. I do not even know you. Do you understand?”

He started away hastily. “Don't stay here. Don't speak to me. Somebody may see you.”

“'Come back here!”

He stopped.

“I demand an explicit promise from you that if you are able to talk with my father you will never mention my name to him or try to take advantage of the dreadful mistake I made.”

“I promise, on my honor,” he said, straightening.

“Thank you, sir.”

“And now that I have promised,” he added, red in his tanned cheeks, “I want to say to you, Miss Marston, that you have insulted me gratuitously. I suppose I'm not much in the way of a gentleman as you meet them in society. I'm only a sailor. But I'm neither a tattler nor a blackmailer. I know the square thing to do where a woman is concerned, and I would have done it without being put under a pledge.” He bowed and walked away.

She gazed after him, a queer sparkle in her eyes. “We'll see about you, you big child!” she murmured.

She entered the waiting-room of the Marston & Waller suite, and was informed that her father was busy with a board meeting.

“But it's merely a bit of routine business. It will soon be over, Miss Marston--if you will be so good as to wait.”

After a time the gentlemen filed out, but she waited on.

“Tell my father that I'm here and will be in presently,” she commanded the guardian.

Before the messenger returned Mayo came in, rather apprehensively. He tried to avoid her, but she met him face to face and accosted him with spirit.

“Now that I have put you on your honor, I'm not afraid to have you talk your business over with my father. Come with me. I will take you to him. Then we will call accounts square between us.”

“Very well,” he consented. “After what I have been through here, I feel that one service matches the other.” Mayo followed her and came into The Presence.

Julius Marston was alone, intrenched behind his desk, on his throne of business; the dark back of the chair, towering over his head, set off in contrast his gray garb and his cold face; to Mayo, who halted respectfully just inside the door, he appeared a sort of bas-relief against that background--something insensate, without ears to listen or heart to bestow compassion.

The girl, hurrying to him, engaged his attention until she had seated herself on the arm of his chair. Then he saw Mayo, recognized him, and tried to rise, but she pushed him back, urging him with eager appeal.

“You must listen to me, father! It is serious! It is important!”

He groped for the row of desk buttons, but she held his hand from them.

Captain Mayo strode forward, determined to speak for himself, rendered bold by the courageous sacrifice the girl was making.

“Not a word! Not a word! The supreme impudence of it!” Marston repeated the last phrase several times with increasing violence. He pushed his daughter off the arm of the chair and struggled up. Only heroic measures could save that situation--and the girl knew her father! She forced herself between him and his desk.

“You'd better listen!” she warned him, hysterically. “A few days ago I ran away to be married!”

He stood there, stricken motionless, and she put her hands against his breast and pressed him back into his chair.

“But this is not the man, father!”