“At the dances.”
“Not at our house?”
“I do not know how you are so sure of that, father,” she returned, a touch of rather wistful reproach in her tones. “You have left me alone in that house ever since mother went away. But it was not at our house—it was in the public ball-rooms.”
“Hell set to music!” he rasped. “I ought to have realized that you are still an infant!”
“No; I am a woman to-day. I lived a whole lifetime in one night on the ocean. I know you have reason to be ashamed of me. But I'll never give you cause for shame again. Now what are you going to say to this man who saved my life—who did more than that? He saved me from myself!”
Marston narrowed his eyes and scrutinized Mayo. “I don't understand this thing yet! The story doesn't ring right.” He turned on his daughter. “How did this man save your life? Be quick and be short!”
He interrupted her in the middle of her eager recital. He had been scowling while she talked, staring into vacancy in meditation.
“A story-book tale!” he declared, impatiently, and yet there was a shade of insincerity in that impatience. “I would be bitterly ashamed of you, Alma, if you had run away as you are trying to make me believe. But—”
“Don't you believe me?”
“Silence! But this trumped-up story is too transparent. You are still acting the fool in the matter of this person, here. Now see here, my man, you are here to-day on the Montana affair. Isn't that so?”