“Of course—Steve,” he agreed. “Steve, take your sister home. Mr. Sylvester’s got a carriage waitin’, and he’ll go with you, I don’t doubt. Do as I tell you, boy—and behave yourself. Don’t wait; go!”
He held the door open until the hysterical girl and her brother had departed. Then he turned to the Dunns.
“Well, ma’am,” he said, dryly. “I don’t know’s there’s anything more to be said. All the questions seem to be settled. Our acquaintance wa’n’t so awful long, but it was interestin’. Knowin’ you has been, as the feller said, a liberal education. Don’t let me keep you any longer. Good afternoon.”
He stepped away from the door. Malcolm and his mother remained standing, for an instant, where they were when Caroline left.
The young man looked as if he would enjoy choking someone, the captain preferably, but said nothing. Then Mrs. Dunn bethought herself of a way to make their exit less awkward and embarrassing.
“My heart!” she said, gasping, and with a clutch at her breast. “My poor heart! I—I fear I’m going to have one of my attacks. Malcolm, your arm—quick!”
With an expression of intense but patient suffering, and leaning heavily upon her son’s arm, she moved past Captain Elisha and from the room.
That evening the captain stood in the lower hall of the apartment house at Central Park West, undecided what to do next. He wished more than anything else in the world to go to his niece. He would have gone to her before—had been dying to go, to soothe, to comfort, to tell her of his love—but he was afraid. His conscience troubled him. Perhaps he had been too brutal. Perhaps he shouldn’t have acted as he did. Maybe forcing the Dunn fleet to show its colors could have been done more diplomatically. He had wanted her to see those colors for herself, to actually see them. But he might have overdone it. He remembered how she shrank from him and turned to her brother. She might hate him more than ever now. If so, then the whole scheme under which he was working fell to pieces.
He was worried about Steve, too. That young man would, naturally, be furious with his sister for what he would consider her romantic foolishness. He had been warned to behave himself; but would he? Captain Elisha paced up and down the marble floor before the elevator cage and wondered whether his visiting the apartment would be a wise move or a foolish one.