The girl bowed, her eyes steady upon his own. "Mr. Kirkwood is very kind," she said gravely.
"That's right!" Calendar exclaimed blandly. "He's promised to see you home. Now both of you will pardon my running away, I know."
"Yes," assented Kirkwood agreeably.
The elder man turned and hurried toward the main entrance.
Kirkwood took the chair he had vacated. To his disgust he found himself temporarily dumb. No flicker of thought illuminated the darkness of his confusion. How was he to open a diverting conversation with a young woman whom he had met under auspices so extraordinary? Any attempt to gloze the situation, he felt, would be futile. And, somehow, he did not care to render himself ridiculous in her eyes, little as he knew her.
Inanely dumb, he sat watching her, smiling fatuously until it was borne in on him that he was staring like a boor and grinning like an idiot. Convinced, he blushed for himself; something which served to make him more tongue-tied than ever.
As for his involuntary protégée, she exhibited such sweet composure that he caught himself wondering if she really appreciated the seriousness of her parent's predicament; if, for that matter, its true nature were known to her at all. Calendar, he believed, was capable of prevarication, polite and impolite. Had he lied to his daughter? or to Kirkwood? To both, possibly; to the former alone, not improbably. That the adventurer had told him the desperate truth, Kirkwood was quite convinced; but he now began to believe that the girl had been put off with some fictitious explanation. Her tranquillity and self-control were remarkable, otherwise; she seemed very young to possess those qualities in such eminent degree.
She was looking wearily past him, her gaze probing some unguessed abyss of thought. Kirkwood felt himself privileged to stare in wonder. Her naïve aloofness of poise gripped his imagination powerfully,—the more so, perhaps, since it seemed eloquent of her intention to remain enigmatic,—but by no means more powerfully than the unaided appeal of her loveliness.
Presently the girl herself relieved the tension of the situation, fairly startling the young man by going straight to the heart of things. Without preface or warning, lifting her gaze to his, "My name is really Dorothy Calendar," she observed. And then, noting his astonishment, "You would be privileged to doubt, under the circumstances," she added. "Please let us be frank."
"Well," he stammered, "if I didn't doubt, let's say I was unprejudiced."