The impudence of this sudden love making moved her unexpectedly to defiance.
"Please let it be ruled, Signor Baskinelli," she said, turning away from him.
Baskinelli had sense enough to see that he had gone too far. He turned to the others as the soft-footed Orientals began to spread the mixed and mysterious viands on the table.
He glanced at Owen. By the slightest movement imaginable, by the least uplift of his black brows, Owen answered. For the first time Baskinelli knew that the lovely quarry he pursued had a protector— and no mean, no weak protector.
But the arrival of the repast quickly covered the general embarrassment. Everybody could see that Pauline and Harry had had a quarrel and that Pauline, was flirting outrageously with Baskenelli simply for revenge—that is, every one except Harry could see it.
"Pardon me, but is that what you call a graft investigation that you are making, Miss Hamlin?" inquired Baskinelli.
"No, but the food is so funny. There are so many queer things present, but unidentified," laughed Lucille.
"Like a reception to a foreign artist," interrupted Harry with a vindictive glare.
"Or shall we say like the conversation of an unhappy guest," said Baskinelli, smilingly turning to note the entrance of a little party of newcomers at the further end of the restaurant.
A dashing, well-dressed, fiery-eyed foreigner, the tips of whose waxed mustachios turned up like black stalagmites from the comers of his cavernous mouth, was accompanied by two nondescript figures, who seemed to be embarrassed more by the fact that they had been recently cleansed and shaved than by their rough red shirts and mismatched coats and trousers.