“Sprang from good old pioneer stock, too, Mark,” said Gaynor.  “Wouldn’t think now, to look at her, that she was born at Gold Run in a family as rugged as yours and mine, would you?  With precious few advantages until she was a girl grown, look at what she has made of herself!  While you and I and the likes of us have been content to stay pretty much in the rough, she hasn’t.  There’s not a more accomplished, cultured little woman this or the other side Boston, even if she did hail from Gold Run.  And as for Gloria, all her doing; why,” and he chuckled, “she hasn’t the slightest idea, I suppose, that she ever had a grandfather who sweated and went about in shirt-sleeves and chewed tobacco and swore!”

“Have to go all the way back to a grandfather?” laughed King.

“Look at me!” challenged Gaynor, thrusting into notice his immaculate attire.  He chuckled.  “One must live down his disgraceful past for his daughter, you know.”

From without came a gust of shouts and laughter from the Gaynor guests skylarking along the lake shore.

“Come,” said Ben.  “You’ll have to meet the crowd, Mark.  And I want you to see my little girl; I’ve told her so many yarns about you that she’s dying of curiosity.”

King, though he would have preferred to tramp ten miles over rough trails, gleaning small joy from meeting strangers not of his sort who would never be anything but strangers to him, accepted the inevitable without demur and followed his host.  He would shake hands, say a dozen stupid words, and escape for a good long talk with Ben.  Then, before the lunch-hour, he would be off.

Gaynor led the way toward a side door, passing through a hallway and a wide sun-room.  Thus they came abreast of a wide stairway leading to the second storey.  Down the glistening treads, making her entrance like the heroine in a play, just at the proper instant, in answer to her cue, came Gloria.

“Gloria,” called Gaynor.

“Papa,” said Miss Gloria, “I wanted——­Oh!  You are not alone!”

Instinctively King frowned.  “Now, why did she say that?” he asked within himself.  For she had seen him coming to the house.  Straight-dealing himself, circuitous ways, even in trifles, awoke his distrust.

“Come here, my dear,” said Ben.  “Mark, this is my little girl.  Gloria, you know all about this wild man.  He is Mark King.”

“Indeed, yes!” cried Gloria.  She came smiling down the stairway, a fluffy pink puffball floating fairy-wise.  Her two hands were out, ingenuously, pretty little pink-nailed hands which had done little in this world beyond adorn charmingly the extremities of two soft round arms.  For an instant King felt the genial current within him frozen as he stiffened to meet the girl he had watched in the extravagant dance down to the lake.