“Thank you, sir.”
“And now that I have promised,” he added, red in his tanned cheeks, “I want to say to you, Miss Marston, that you have insulted me gratuitously. I suppose I'm not much in the way of a gentleman as you meet them in society. I'm only a sailor. But I'm neither a tattler nor a blackmailer. I know the square thing to do where a woman is concerned, and I would have done it without being put under a pledge.” He bowed and walked away.
She gazed after him, a queer sparkle in her eyes. “We'll see about you, you big child!” she murmured.
She entered the waiting-room of the Marston & Waller suite, and was informed that her father was busy with a board meeting.
“But it's merely a bit of routine business. It will soon be over, Miss Marston—if you will be so good as to wait.”
After a time the gentlemen filed out, but she waited on.
“Tell my father that I'm here and will be in presently,” she commanded the guardian.
Before the messenger returned Mayo came in, rather apprehensively. He tried to avoid her, but she met him face to face and accosted him with spirit.
“Now that I have put you on your honor, I'm not afraid to have you talk your business over with my father. Come with me. I will take you to him. Then we will call accounts square between us.”
“Very well,” he consented. “After what I have been through here, I feel that one service matches the other.” Mayo followed her and came into The Presence.