A faint touch of color leaped into her cheeks. She met her father's glance with an inquiring one of her own.
"Well—yes. Rather," she said at last. "He's a nice boy."
"Better not," Gower rumbled. His frown grew deeper. His teeth clamped a cigar in one corner of his mouth at an aggressive angle. "Granted that he is what you call a nice boy. I'll admit he's good-looking and that he dances well. And he seems to pack a punch up his sleeve. I'd suggest that you don't cultivate any romantic fancy for him. Because he's making himself a nuisance in my business—and I'm going to smash him."
Gower turned away. If he had lingered he might have observed unmistakable signs of temper. Betty flew storm signals from cheek and eye. She looked after her father with something akin to defiance, likewise with an air of astonishment.
"As if I—" she left the whispered sentence unfinished.
She perched herself on the mahogany-capped rail, and while she waited for Nelly Abbott she gave herself up to thinking of herself and her father and her father's amazing warning which carried a veiled threat,—an open threat so far as Jack MacRae was concerned. Why should he cut loose like that on her?
She stared thoughtfully at the Blackbird, marked the trollers slipping in from the grounds and clustering around the chunky carrier.
It might have interested Mr. Horace Gower could he have received a verbatim report of his daughter's reflections for the next five minutes. But whether it would have pleased him it is hard to say.