“She proved what a woman could do, Mr. Holt.”
“Yes, and a little later she proved how foolish a woman can be, Miss Standish. She became the richest woman in Dawson. Then came a man who posed as a count, Belinda married him, and they went to Paris. Finis, I think. Now, if she had married Stampede Smith over there, with his big whiskers—”
He did not finish. Half a dozen paces from them a man had risen from a table and was facing them. There was nothing unusual about him, except his boldness as he looked at Mary Standish. It was as if he knew her and was deliberately insulting her in a stare that was more than impudent in its directness. Then a sudden twist came to his lips; he shrugged his shoulders slightly and turned away.
Alan glanced swiftly at his companion. Her lips were compressed, and her cheeks were flaming hotly. Even then, as his own blood boiled, he could not but observe how beautiful anger made her.
“If you will pardon me a moment,” he said quietly, “I shall demand an explanation.”
Her hand linked itself quickly through his arm.
“Please don’t,” she entreated. “It is kind of you, and you are just the sort of man I should expect to resent a thing like that. But it would be absurd to notice it. Don’t you think so?”
In spite of her effort to speak calmly, there was a tremble in her voice, and Alan was puzzled at the quickness with which the color went from her face, leaving it strangely white.
“I am at your service,” he replied with a rather cold inclination of his head. “But if you were my sister, Miss Standish, I would not allow anything like that to go unchallenged.”
He watched the stranger until he disappeared through a door out upon the deck.