“Hello, Jack,” she said.

He came up to her, put his hands on her shoulders.

“What is it now?” he demanded.  “I saw Norman Gower leaving as I came up.  And here you’re looking—­what’s wrong?”

His tone was imperative.

“Nothing, Johnny.”

“You don’t cry for nothing.  You’re not that kind,” MacRae replied.  “That chunky lobster hasn’t given you the glooms, surely?”

Dolly’s eyes flashed.

“It isn’t like you to call names,” she declared.  “It isn’t nice.  And—­and what business of yours is it whether I laugh or cry?”

MacRae smiled.  Dolly in a temper was not wholly strange to him.  He was struck with her remarkable beauty every time he saw her.  She was altogether too beautiful a flower to be blushing unseen on an island in the Gulf.  He shook her gently.

“Because I’m big brother.  Because you and I were kids together for years before we ever knew there could be serpents in Eden.  Because anything that hurts you hurts me.  I don’t like anything to make you cry, mia Dolores.  I’d wring Norman Gower’s chubby neck with great pleasure if I thought he could do that.  I didn’t even know you knew him.”

Dolly dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“There are lots of things you don’t know, Jack MacRae,” she murmured.  “Besides, why shouldn’t I know Norman?”

MacRae threw out his hands helplessly.

“No law against it, of course,” he admitted.  “Only—­well—­”

He was conscious of floundering, with her grave, dark eyes searching his face.  There was no reason save his own hostility to anything Gower,—­and Dolly knew no basis for that save the fact that Horace Gower had acquired his father’s ranch.  That could not possibly be a ground for Dolores Ferrara to frown on any Gower, male or female, who happened to come her way.

“Why, I suppose it really is none of my business,” he said slowly.  “Except that I can’t help being concerned in anything that makes you unhappy.  That’s all.”

He sat down on the arm of her chair and patted her cheek.  To his utter amazement Dolly broke into a storm of tears.  Long ago he had seen Dolly cry when she had hurt herself, because he had teased her, because she was angry or disappointed.  He had never seen any woman cry as she did now.  It was not just simple grieved weeping.  It was a tempest that shook her.  Her body quivered, her breath came in gasping bursts between racking sobs.

MacRae gathered her into his arms, trying to dam that wild flood.  She put her face against him and clung there, trembling like some hunted thing seeking refuge, mysteriously stirring MacRae with the passionate abandon of her tears, filling him with vague apprehensions, with a strange excitement.

Like the tornado, swift in its striking and passing, so this storm passed.  Dolly’s sobbing ceased.  She rested passively in his arms for a minute.  Then she sighed, brushed the cloudy hair out of her eyes, and looked up at him.