The millionaire gave a little click of his tongue significant of annoyance.
“Moreau had a dozen chances of making his pile, as every man did in those days,” he said. “He was the sort of man who is predestined to leave his family poor.”
“Yet they worship his memory,” said Mrs. Willers. “He must have been very good to them.”
Shackleton made no answer. She was used to reading his expression, and the odd thought crossed her mind that this remark of hers was unpleasant to him.
Before she had time to reply a knock at the door announced the arrival of Mariposa. As she entered the two men stood up, both looking at her with veiled eagerness. To Essex his feeling for her was making her every appearance an event. To Shackleton it was a moment of quivering interest in a career full of tumultuous moments.
A slight flush mounted to his face as he met her eyes. She instinctively looked at him first, with a charming look, girlish, shy, and deprecating. Her likeness to her mother struck him like a blow, but she was an Amazonian Lucy, with all that Lucy had lacked. He saw himself in the stronger jaw and the firm lips. Physically she was molded of them both. His heart swelled with a passionate pride. This, indeed, was his own child, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.
The introductions over, they resettled themselves, and Mariposa found herself beside this quiet, gray-haired man, talking quite volubly. She was not shy nor nervous, as she had expected to be, but felt peculiarly at her ease. Looking at her with intent eyes, he spoke to her of the early days in California, when he and her parents had come across.
“You know, I knew your father in the Sierra, long ago,” he said.
“TO SHACKLETON IT WAS A MOMENT OF QUIVERING INTEREST”