“What does it mean?” he demanded, with shaking voice. “Did you see that he was there with Pritchard—your young man—that wretched estate agent's clerk? I tell you that Pritchard was pumping him for all he was worth.”
“My dear father,” she whispered, coldly, “don't be melodramatic. You give yourself away the whole time. Go to bed if you can't behave like a man.”
The lights had been turned low, there was no one else in the room. The little old gentleman with the eyeglass leaned forward.
“Have you any notion, my dear Elizabeth,” he asked, “why our friend Pritchard is so much in evidence just at present?”
“Not on account of you, Jimmy,” she answered, “nor of any one else here, in fact. The truth is he has conceived a violent admiration for me—an admiration so pronounced, indeed, that he hates to let me out of his sight.”
They all laughed uproariously. Then Walter Crease, the journalist, leaned forward,—a man with a long, narrow face, yellow-stained fingers, and hollow cheekbones. He glanced around the room before he spoke, and his voice sounded like a hoarse whisper.
“See here,” he said, “seems to me Pritchard is getting mighty awkward. He hasn't got his posse around him in this country, anyway.”
There was a dead silence for several seconds. Then the little old gentleman nodded solemnly.
“I am a trifle tired of Pritchard myself,” he admitted, “and he certainly knows too much. He carries too much in his head to go around safely.”
The eyes of Elizabeth were bright.