“In the past,” she said, “women of suitable age have not perhaps been willing to consider the question, but this lady seems to me distinctly willing.”

“More than willingness on the lady’s part has been needed,” answered Adelaide, and then Pringle’s ample form appeared in the doorway.  “There’s a man from the office here, Madam, asking to see Mr. Farron.”

“Mr. Farron can see no one.”  A sudden light flashed upon her.  “What is his name, Pringle?”

“Burke, Madam.”

“Oh, let him come in.”  Adelaide turned to Mrs. Baxter.  “I will show you,” she said, “one of the finest sights you ever saw.”  The next instant Marty was in the room.  Not so gorgeous as in his wedding-attire, he was still an exceedingly fine young animal.  He was not so magnificently defiant as before, but he scowled at his unaccustomed surroundings under his dark brows.

“It’s Mr. Farron I wanted to see,” he said, a soft roll to his r’s.  At Mrs. Wayne’s Adelaide had suffered from being out of her own surroundings, but here she was on her own field, and she meant to make Burke feel it.  She was leaning with her elbow on the back of the sofa, and now she slipped her bright rings down her slim fingers and shook them back again as she looked up at Burke and spoke to him as she would have done to a servant.

“Mr. Farron cannot see you.”

Cleverer people than Burke had struggled vainly against the poison of inferiority which this tone instilled into their minds.

“That’s what they keep telling me down-town.  I never knew him sick before.”

“No?”

“It wouldn’t take five minutes.”

“Mr. Farron is too weak to see you.”

Marty made a strange grating sound in his throat, and Adelaide asked like a queen bending from the throne: 

“What seems to be the matter, Burke?”

“Why,”—­Burke turned upon her the flare of his light, fierce eyes,—­“they have it on me on the dock that as soon as he comes back he means to bounce me.”

“To bounce you,” repeated Adelaide, and she almost smiled as she thought of that poor exhausted figure up-stairs.

“I don’t care if he does or not,” Marty went on.  “I’m not so damned stuck on the job.  There’s others.”

“There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,” murmured Adelaide.

Again he scowled, feeling the approach of something hostile to him.

“What’s that?” he asked, surmising that she was insulting him.

“I said I supposed you could get a better job if you tried.”

He did not like this tone either.

“Well, whether I could or not,” he said, “this is no way.  I’m losing my hold of my men.”

“Oh, I can’t imagine your doing that, Burke.”

He turned on her to see if she were really daring to laugh at him, and met an eye as steady as his own.

“I guess I’m wasting my time here,” he said, and something intimated that some one would pay for that expenditure.