"Look here!" he exclaimed in a supercilious tone; "I've a notion that I know who you are, and this isn't the first time, either, that you have interfered with me in what was none of your business. I know you, Faxon, and I swear I'll make you sweat for this!"
Clifford Faxon—for it was he—now bent forward and peered into the face of the speaker, even though he had already recognized the speaker.
"Great heavens!" he exclaimed in a voice resonant with mingled disgust and indignation, "have you descended so low as this, Wentworth?"
A startled cry broke from Mollie at this point, and she swept close to the young man's side.
"Philip Wentworth!" she gasped, and now she knew why his voice had sounded familiar to her, although, having been under the influence of liquor, his utterance had been very indistinct, while fear had so changed hers that, in his drunken condition, he had failed to recognize it. But as she now spoke his name a terrible shock went through him, sobering him completely.
"Mollie! Good God!" he cried in a tone of mingled mortification and dismay, while Clifford's heart leaped with joy as he caught the name. The fair girl haughtily drew herself erect and away from him.
"Let this be the last time, Mr. Wentworth, that you ever address me so familiarly; indeed, from this moment we are strangers."
"By all that is sacred, Mollie, I never dreamed that it was you."
Philip faltered with abject humility. "I swear——"
"Silence!" she commanded imperatively. "Never presume to call me 'Mollie' again. Of course I understand that you did not know me—neither did I recognize you under existing conditions. But you did know that you were insulting a woman, and the fact that you had no more respect for my sex, whoever the individual might be, I regard as direct an outrage as if you had known me."