"Excuse me. You know very well, but you refuse," I replied. "Now, here is something for you to think of. All the wicked things you do, the cruelties you practice, are to be spread before the novel reading public of America! That ought to soften your hard heart. You know 'All the world loves a lover,' but there is no proverb to fit a thoroughly heartless girl."
"I would like you much better if you would not say such things," she pouted.
"You speak as if you did like me a little, even now," I responded.
"Like you!" she exclaimed. "That's just it. I like you ever and ever so much. How can I help it, when you are so kind to me? I like you and I want to continue to like you, Mr. Camran. I wish I could think you would never learn to dislike me."
As I began an impassioned declaration that the day would never dawn, she started violently and bit her lips till the teeth marks showed plainly. In another instant I saw what had caused her mental disturbance; two men were looking at us from a street car that was trying with some success to reach the hill by the hotel before we did. Those men were Robert Edgerly and Horace Wesson.
"Don't let him get you into trouble," she whispered, between her closed lips. "I heard him threaten you at St. Croix. Oh, how did he get here!"
She referred, of course, to Edgerly.
CHAPTER XX.
NEW WORK FOR MY TYPEWRITER.