“I don’t think you need worry,” and Flora Schuyler laughed. “He is probably cured by this time, and has found somebody else. They usually do. That ought to please you.”
In the meantime, Allonby and the man he was presenting to his friends were drawing nearer. Hetty rose when the pair stopped in front of them.
“Captain Jackson Cheyne, who is coming to help us. Miss Torrance and Miss Schuyler, the daughter and guest of our leader,” said Allonby, and the soldierly man with the quiet, brown face, smiling, held out his hand.
“We are friends already,” he said, and passed on with Allonby.
“Was it very dreadful, Hetty?” said Flora Schuyler. “I could see he means to come back and talk to you.”
Hetty also fancied Cheyne wished to do so, and spent the next hour or two in avoiding the encounter. With this purpose she contrived to draw Chris Allonby into one of the smaller rooms where the card-tables were then untenanted, and listened with becoming patience to stories she had often heard before. She, however, found it a little difficult to laugh at the right places, and at last the lad glanced reproachfully at her.
“It spoils everything when one has to show you where the point is,” he said; and Hetty, looking up, saw Cheyne and Flora Schuyler in the doorway.
“Miss Newcombe is looking for you, Mr. Allonby,” said the latter.
There was very little approval in the glance Hetty bestowed upon Miss Schuyler and Allonby seemed to understand it.
“She generally is, and that is why I’m here,” he said. “I don’t feel like hearing about any more lepidoptera to-night, and you can take her Captain Cheyne instead. He must have found out quite a lot about beetles and other things that bite you down in Arizona.”