“I reckon that was about how it started,” he admitted slowly.  “You see, I rather thought I was a sorter friend of yours, and that I ought to stand up for you.”

“Did—­did this man say anything against me?”

“No—­not exactly; he—­he just asked questions.”

Her eyes were scornful, angry,

“Indeed!  Well, permit me to say, Mr. Westcott, that I choose my own friends, and am perfectly competent to defend my own character.  This closes our acquaintanceship.”

She moved about the end of the table, and touched Beaton’s sleeve with her fingers.

“Would you escort me to the foot of the stairs?” she asked, her voice softening.  “We will leave this belligerent individual to his own company.”

Neither of them glanced back, the girl still speaking as they disappeared, but Westcott turned in his chair to watch them cross the room.  He had no sense of anger, no desire to retaliate, but he felt dazed and as though the whole world was suddenly turned upside down.  So she really belonged with that outfit, did she?  Well, it was a good joke on him.

The waitress spoke to him twice before he was sufficiently aroused to give his order.

CHAPTER XI:  DEAD OR ALIVE

Before Westcott finished his meal his mood had changed to tolerant amusement.  That the girl had deliberately deceived him was plain, enough, revealed now in both her manner and words.  What her true purpose might have been in apparently seeking his friendship at first could not now be conjectured—­indeed, made little difference—­but it was clear enough she really belonged to the Lacy crowd, and had no more use for him.

Westcott was sorry for the turn things had taken; he made no attempt to disguise this from his own mind.  He was beginning to like Miss Donovan, to think about her, to feel a distinct interest in her.  Some way she had impressed him deeply as a young woman of character and unusual charm—­a breath out of the East to arouse his imagination and memory.  He had begun to hope for a friendship which would endure, and now—­the house of cards fell at a single touch.

He could scarcely comprehend the situation; how a girl of her apparent refinement and gentility could ever be attracted by a rough, brutal type such as Ned Beaton so evidently was.  Why, the man’s lack of taste in dress, the expression of his face, his ungrammatical language, stamped him as belonging to a distinctly lower order.

There surely must be some other cause drawing them together.  Yet, whatever it was, there was no doubt but that he had been very properly snubbed.  Her words stung; yet it was the manner in which she had looked at him and swept past at Beaton’s side which hurt the most.  Oh, well, an enemy more or less made small difference in his life; he would laugh at it and forget.  She had made her choice of companionship, and it was just as well, probably, that the affair had gone no further before he discovered the sort of girl she really was.