The two men stood up sobered—­yet belligerent.

“As you like, sir,” said Beeswinger, flashing.

“The sooner the better for me,” added Wynyard curtly.

They passed the unruffled Jack Hamlin with a smile and a vaguely significant air, as if calling him as a witness to the colonel’s madness, and strode out of the room.

As the door closed behind them, Mr. Hamlin lightly settled his white waistcoat, and, with his hands on his hips, lounged towards the colonel.  “And then?” he said quietly.

“Eh?” said the colonel.

“After you’ve shot one or both of these men, or one of ’em has knocked you out, what’s to become of that child?”

“If—­I am—­er—­spared, sir,” said the colonel huskily, “I shall continue to defend her—­against calumny and sneers”—­

“In this style, eh?  After her life has been made a hell by her association with a man of your reputation, you propose to whitewash it by a quarrel with a couple of drunken scallawags like Beeswinger and Wynyard, in the presence of three painted trollops and a d——­d scamp like myself!  Do you suppose this won’t be blown all over California before she can be sent back to school?  Do you suppose those cackling hussies in the next room won’t give the whole story away to the next man who stands treat?” (A fine contempt for the sex in general was one of Mr. Hamlin’s most subtle attractions for them.)

“Nevertheless, sir,” stammered the colonel, “the prompt punishment of the man who has dared”—­

“Punishment!” interrupted Hamlin, “who’s to punish the man who has dared most?  The one man who is responsible for the whole thing?  Who’s to punish you?”

“Mr. Hamlin—­sir!” gasped the colonel, falling back, as his hand involuntarily rose to the level of his waistcoat pocket and his derringer.

But Mr. Hamlin only put down the wine glass he had lifted from the table and was delicately twirling between his fingers, and looked fixedly at the colonel.

“Look here,” he said slowly.  “When the boys said that you accepted the guardianship of that child not on account of Dick Stannard, but only as a bluff against the joke they’d set up at you, I didn’t believe them!  When these men and women to-night tumbled to that story of the child being yours, I didn’t believe that!  When it was said by others that you were serious about making her your ward, and giving her your property, because you doted on her like a father, I didn’t believe that.”

“And—­why not that?” said the colonel quickly, yet with an odd tremor in his voice.

“Because,” said Hamlin, becoming suddenly as grave as the colonel, “I could not believe that any one who cared a picayune for the child could undertake a trust that might bring her into contact with a life and company as rotten as ours.  I could not believe that even the most God-forsaken, conceited fool would, for the sake of a little sentimental parade and splurge among people outside his regular walk, allow the prospects of that child to be blasted.  I couldn’t believe it, even if he thought he was acting like a father.  I didn’t believe it—­but I’m beginning to believe it now!”