“God o’ my fathers!”
Jubilee breathed his astonished admiration into McLagan’s ears, and was promptly silenced by a look.
Somewhat embarrassed Claire came down the room with heightened colour, and eyes that smiled almost shyly. It was the same sweet face which McLagan had always known. Only it lacked something of that natural freshness which the wind and the sun of the coast had bestowed upon it in her days on Lively Creek. The downy bloom of those days had been replaced by a suggestion of powder. Even her pretty lips seemed to have gained added ripeness from the careful touch of cosmetic. But the wide blue eyes, the even brows, and the rounded, perfectly moulded cheeks were the same, and, to the man’s thinking, even more beautiful.
But some of the delight McLagan felt as the girl came quickly towards him passed at once as he beheld the figure of Max close behind her. Many a night he had looked on at the centre table where Claire always played, and had even found amusement in observing the crowd of men of all conditions who never failed to gather like moths about a candle flame. He had watched them in their frantic efforts to win her ready smile, and it had filled him only with added pleasure in her beauty and simple charm.
But the sight of Max at that moment, with his sleek, dark head, and his carefully cut close beard, his immaculate clothes, and his good-looking foreign face, inspired a feeling he had never before experienced. He remembered the method of this girl’s entrance. The elaborate staginess of it. And he realised that Max had not designed an entrance for the most popular gambler in Beacon Glory. No. It was for the woman herself. And Max was rich and powerful, and without scruple. And, furthermore, with immense resources for achieving any purpose upon which he set his mind.
Anger rose behind the man’s keen eyes, and their usual easy humour was changed to a glitter that had nothing mild or yielding in it.
CHAPTER VIII
The Man from the Lias River
THE little burst of applause which greeted Claire’s entrance had died out. Like the stage light that had descended upon her it had left her with a slight feeling of embarrassment. But she understood that the men, at least, if not the women, were in the mood to applaud anything and everything, for it was a night of festival. It was the first of its kind she had attended. She had known by tradition what was expected, and had seen to it that she played her part. So her gown was the most expensive she could import from Seattle and the largish beaded handbag she was carrying was packed with a roll of money of unusually large proportions.