it was nothing
more nor less than a certain set look about his eye muscles. Some
gamblers have it, and it did not strike my fancy in the new mine
superintendent at La Chance. But watch as I might, I saw no sign of an
understanding between him and my dream girl. It was impossible to be
sure, of course, but I was nearly sure. She spoke to him as she spoke to
Marcia and Dudley--she never addressed one word to me--just easily and
simply, as people do who live in the same house. Macartney himself
talked mostly to Marcia, which was no business of mine. Only I was
somehow curiously thankful that it had not been Macartney whom Paulette
had meant to meet in the dark. There was something about his eyes that
said he was no safe customer for any girl to speak to with
hatred,--especially a girl whom another girl was watching, as Marcia was
watching Paulette Brown. I decided it must have been either Dunn or
Collins--our two worthless Yale boys at the mine--whom she had wanted to
get rid of, and I felt better; for it would be easy enough to save her
trouble by doing that myself. They might just have come back to La
Chance like me, for all I knew, because Dudley had a trick of sending
the men heaven knew where to prospect.

It was rot, anyhow, to be taking a girl's affairs so seriously. I looked
at my dream girl's clear eyes, and thought that if she knew what Marcia
and I were thinking about her she might have good reason to be angry.
Also that Dudley probably knew all about her evening stroll and what she
was doing at La Chance, if Marcia did not. And Dudley's self-important
voice cut through my thoughts like a knife:

"Where on earth were you this evening, Paulette?" he was demanding
irritably. "I couldn't see a sign of you when Marcia and I went out, and
you weren't anywhere when we came in!"

"I don't know"--the girl began--and I saw the color go out of her face,
and it made me angry.

"I can tell you where Miss Brown was," I said deliberately, "if she's
ashamed to own it. She was good and settled by this fire."

Why I lied for her I could not say. But the glance she turned on me gave
me a flat sort of feeling, as if Marcia might be right and she was there
for reasons of her own that I had all but stumbled on by accident. I was
a fool to care; but then I had been a fool all day with my silly
thoughts of leaving La Chance to chase the world for an imaginary girl,
and more fool still to think I had found her there waiting for m