"I'll make a bargain with you," he said finally from the silence in which the girl had stood watching him. "You have dinner with me; we'll have the best the Settlement knows how to serve us, and I'll let you try to pump me."
She looked at him curiously.
"You have the name of a trouble seeker, Mr. Drennen. Do you fancy that you can anger Marc and Captain Sefton this way?"
"That, too, we can talk about at dinner, if you like."
For a moment she looked at him, gravely thoughtful, her brows puckered into a thoughtful frown. Then she put back her head with a gesture indefinably suggestive of recklessness, and laughed as she had laughed when she had first come upon him.
"The novel invitation is accepted," she said lightly. "I must hurry down to dress for the grand occasion, Mr. Drennen."
Before she could flash about and turn from him David Drennen did a thing he had done for no woman in many years. He rose to his feet, making her a sweeping bow as he lifted his hat with the old grace which the years had not taken from him. And as she went down the mountain side he dropped back to his rock, his teeth again hard, clamped upon his pipe stem, his eyes steely and bitter and filled with cynical irony.