"I would love to," she exclaimed. "I may have something to report if I can make Mr. Hilliard talk."
"Out of curiosity, I should like to know what influenced him." All women were more or less suspicious, he reflected, and some of them were highly intuitive; still, he could not believe that this was all Willis Marsh's doing. As he mused he idly thumbed the pages of a magazine. He was about to lay it down when his eye caught a well-known face, and he started, then glanced at the date of issue. It was a duplicate of that copy which had affected him so deeply in Cherry's house at Kalvik. He lifted his eyes to find her scrutinizing him.
"No, you can't cut out that page," she said, with a slightly embarrassed laugh.
"Where did you run across this?"
"I didn't run across it" she admitted; "I scoured the book-stalls for it all the morning. Curiosity is a feminine trait, you know."
"I don't quite understand."
"That missing page has caused me insomnia for months. But now I'm as puzzled as ever, for there are two pictures, one on either side of the leaf, and each has possibilities. Which is it—the society bud or the prima donna?"
"I don't know what you mean," he answered, somewhat stiffly. His love for Mildred Wayland had always been so sacred and inviolable a thing that even Cherry's frank inquisitiveness seemed an intrusion.
"I'll call for you in time for the nine-o'clock boat," he added, as he arose to go. "Meanwhile, if you get a hint from Hilliard, it may be useful."
Left to his own devices, Boyd spent the evening in gloomy solitude, vainly seeking for some way out of his difficulties. But, despite his preoccupation with his own affairs, a vague feeling of resentment at the thought of Cherry and Hilliard kept forcing itself upon his mind. Perhaps the girl's indiscretion was of no very serious nature; yet he found it hard to excuse even a small breach of propriety upon her part. Surely, she must understand the imprudence of dining alone with the banker. His attentions to her could have but one interpretation. And she was too nice a girl to compromise herself in the slightest degree. Although he told himself that a business reason had prompted her, and reflected that the business methods of women are baffling to the mind of mere man, his reasoning quite failed to reconcile him to the situation. In the end he had to acknowledge that he did not like the look of it in the least.