“She is more than pretty, she is beautiful,” Dunn answered with an emphasis that made Deede Dawson look at him sharply.
“Think so?” he said, and gave his peculiar laugh that had so little mirth in it. “Well, you're right, she is. He'll be a lucky man that gets her—and she's to be had, you know. But I'll tell you one thing, it won't be John Clive.”
“I thought it rather looked,” observed Dunn, “as if Miss Cayley might mean—”
Deede Dawson interrupted with a quick jerk of his head.
“Never mind what she means, it'll be what I mean,” he declared. “I am boss; and what's more, she knows it. I believe in a man being master in his own family. Don't you?”
“If he can be,” retorted Dunn. “But still, a girl naturally—”
“Naturally nothing,” Deede Dawson interrupted again. “I tell you what I want for her, a man I can trust—trust—that's the great thing. Some one I can trust.”
He nodded at Dunn as he said this and then walked off, and Dunn felt very puzzled as he, too, turned away.
“Was he offering her to me?” he asked himself. “It almost sounded like it. If so, it must mean there's something he wants from me pretty bad. She's beautiful enough to turn any man's head—but did she know about poor Charlie's murder?—help in it, perhaps?—as she said she did with the packing-case.”
He paused, and all his body was shaken by strong and fierce emotion.