Part 6 (1/2)

”Miss Heathcote?” said Brooke, for it had happened, not unnaturally, that he had never heard the girl's full name. Her companions, of whom he had not felt warranted in inquiring it, had called her Barbara in the bush, and he had addressed her without prefix.

”Yes,” said the other, who was once more a trifle astonished. ”Miss Barbara Heathcote.”

He glanced at Brooke sharply, or he would not have seen the swift content in his face, for the latter put a sudden restraint upon himself.

”Of course! I will come with you at once,” he said, and a minute or two later took the vacant place at Barbara's side.

”You do not appear very much surprised, and yet it was a long way from here I saw you last,” she said.

Brooke fancied she meant that it was under somewhat different circ.u.mstances, and sat looking at her with a little smile. She was also, he decided, even better worth inspection than she had been in the bush, for the rich attire became her, and the garish electric radiance emphasized the gleam of the white shoulder the dainty laces clung about and of the ivory neck the moonlight had shone upon when first they met.

”No,” he said. ”The fact is, I have seen you already on several occasions in this city.”

Barbara glanced at him covertly. ”Then why did you not claim recognition?”

”Isn't the reason obvious?”

”No,” said Barbara, reflectively, ”I scarcely think it is--unless, of course, you had no desire to renew the acquaintance.”

”Does one usually renew a chance acquaintance made with a packer in the bush?”

”It would depend a good deal on the packer,” said Barbara, quietly. ”Now this country is----”

There was a trace of dryness in Brooke's smile. ”You were going to say a democratic one. That, of course, might to some extent explain the anomaly.”

”No,” said Barbara, sharply, with a very faint flush of color in her face, ”I was not. You ought to know that, too. Explanations are occasionally odious, and almost always difficult, but both Major Hume and his daughter invited you to their house if you were ever in England.”

”The Major may have felt himself tolerably safe in making that offer,”

said Brooke, reflectively. ”You see, I am naturally acquainted with my fellow Briton's idiosyncrasies.”

The girl looked at him with a little sparkle in her eyes. ”I do not know why you are adopting this att.i.tude, or a.s.signing one to me,” she said.

”Did we ever attempt to patronize you, and if we had done, is there any reason why you should take the trouble to resent it?”

Brooke laughed softly. ”I scarcely think I could afford to resent a kindness, however it was offered; but there is a point you don't quite seem to have grasped. How could I be certain you had remembered me?”

The girl smiled a little. ”Your own powers of recollection might have furnished a standard of comparison.”

Brooke looked at her steadily. ”The sharpness of the memory depends upon the effect the object one wishes to recollect produced upon one's mind,” he said. ”I should, of course, have known you at once had it been twenty years hence.”

The girl turned to her programme, for now she had induced him to abandon his reticence his candor was almost disconcerting.

”Well,” she said. ”Tell me what you have been doing. You have left the ranch?”

Brooke nodded and glanced at the hand he laid on his knee, which, as the girl saw, was still ingrained and hard.

”Road-making for one thing,” he said. ”Chopping trees, quarrying rock, and following other useful occupations of the kind. They are, one presumes, healthy and necessary, but I did not find any of them especially remunerative.”

”And now?”

Brooke's face, as she did not fail to notice, hardened suddenly, and he felt an unpleasant embarra.s.sment as he met her eyes. He had decided that he was fully warranted in taking any steps likely to lead to the recovery of the dollars he had been robbed of, but he was sensible that the only ones he had found convenient would scarcely commend themselves to his companion. There was also no ignoring the fact that he would very much have preferred her approbation.