“Who is your papa?” he asked, with a bit of alarm stirring in his breast, for he had no mind to offend any one of importance where there was no need.
“I sha'n't tell you,” came the petulant retort from the girl. Her ivory forehead was wrinkled charmingly in a little frown of obstinacy. “Why,” she went on, displaying new symptoms of distress over another appalling idea that flashed on her in this moment, “you would probably give my name to the reporters.” Once again the rosebud mouth drooped into curves of sorrow, of a great self-pity. “If it ever got into the newspapers, my family would die of shame!”
The pathos of her fear pierced through the hardened crust of the police official. He spoke apologetically.
“Now, the easiest way out for both of us,” he suggested, “is for you to tell me just who you are. You see, young lady, you were found in the house of a notorious crook.”
The haughtiness of the girl waxed. It seemed as if she grew an inch taller in her scorn of the Inspector's saying.
“How perfectly absurd!” she exclaimed, scathingly. “I was calling on Miss Mary Turner!”
“How did you come to meet her, anyhow?” Burke inquired. He still held his big voice to a softer modulation than that to which it was habituated.
Yet, the disdain of the girl seemed only to increase momently. She showed plainly that she regarded this brass-buttoned official as one unbearably insolent in his demeanor toward her. Nevertheless, she condescended to reply, with an exaggeration of the aristocratic drawl to indicate her displeasure.
“I was introduced to Miss Turner,” she explained, “by Mr. Richard Gilder. Perhaps you have heard of his father, the owner of the Emporium.”
“Oh, yes, I've heard of his father, and of him, too,” Burke admitted, placatingly.