Watching him solemn-eyed above her own intermittent nibbles, the girl spoke out quite simply the thought that was uppermost in her mind.  “This supper’ll come in mighty handy, won’t it, if we have to be out here all night, Mr. Barton?”

“If we have to be out here—­all night?” faltered Barton.

Oh, ye gods!  If just their afternoon ride together had been hotel talk—­as of course it was within five minutes after their departure—­what would their midnight return be?  Or rather their non-return?  Already through his addled brain he heard the monotonous creak-creak of rocking-chair gossip, the sly jest of the smoking-room, the whispered excitement of the kitchen—­all the sophisticated old worldlings hoping indifferently for the best, all the unsophisticated old prudes yearning ecstatically for the worst!

“If we have to stay out here all night?” he repeated wildly.  “Oh, what—­oh, what will your father say, Miss Edgarton?”

“What will Father say?” drawled little Eve Edgarton.  Thuddingly she set down the empty beef-jar.  “Oh, Father’ll say:  What in creation is Eve out trying to save to-night?  A dog?  A cat?  A three-legged deer?”

“Well, what do you expect to save?” quizzed Barton a bit tartly.

“Just—­you,” acknowledged little Eve Edgarton without enthusiasm.  “And isn’t it funny,” she confided placidly, “that I’ve never yet succeeded in saving anything that I could take home with me—­and keep!  That’s the trouble with boarding!”

In a vague, gold-colored flicker of appeal her lifted face flared out again into Barton’s darkness.  Too fugitive to be called a smile, a tremor of reminiscence went scudding across her mouth before the brooding shadow of her old slouch hat blotted out her features again.

“In India once,” persisted the dreary little voice, “in India once, when Father and I were going into the mountains for the summer, there was a—­there was a sort of fakir at one of the railway stations doing tricks with a crippled tiger-cub—­a tiger-cub with a shot-off paw.  And when Father wasn’t looking I got off the train and went back—­and I followed that fakir two days till he just naturally had to sell me the tiger-cub; he couldn’t exactly have an Englishwoman following him indefinitely, you know.  And I took the tiger-cub back with me to Father and he was very cunning—­but—­” Languorously the speech trailed off into indistinctness.  “But the people at the hotel were—­were indifferent to him,” she rallied whisperingly.  “And I had to let him go.”

“You got off a train?  In India?  Alone?” snapped Barton.  “And went following a dirty, sneaking fakir for two days?  Well, of all the crazy—­indiscreet—­”

“Indiscreet?” mused little Eve Edgarton.  Again out of the murky blackness her tilted chin caught up the flare of yellow lantern-light.  “Indiscreet?” she repeated monotonously.  “Who?  I?”

“Yes—­you,” grunted Barton.  “Traipsing ’round all alone—­after—­”