e, is it?" said Mrs. Wayne.

"Black eyes or blue," said Marty, with a horizontal gesture of his
hands, "her brother wants to see her married."

"Well, I don't," replied Mrs. Wayne, "at least not to this boy. I will
never give my consent to putting a child of her age in the power of a
degenerate little drunkard like that."

Mrs. Farron listened with all her ears. She did not think herself a
prude, and only a moment before she had been accusing Mrs. Wayne of
ignorance of the world; but never in all her life had she heard such
words as were now freely exchanged between Burke and his hostess on the
subject of the degree of consent that the girl in question had given to
the advances of Burke's protege. She would have been as embarrassed as a
girl if either of the disputants had been in the least aware of her
presence. Once, she thought, Mrs. Wayne, for the sake of good manners,
was on the point of turning to her and explaining the whole situation;
but fortunately the exigencies of the dispute swept her on too fast.
Adelaide was shocked, physically rather than morally, by the nakedness of
their talk; but she did not want them to stop. She was fascinated by the
spectacle of Marty Burke in action. She recognized at once that he was a
dangerous man, not dangerous to female virtue, like all the other men to
whom she had heard the term applied, but actually dangerous to life and
property. She was not in the least afraid of him, but she knew he was a
real danger. She enjoyed the knowledge. In most ways she was a woman
timid in the face of physical danger, but she had never imagined being
afraid of another human being. That much, perhaps, her sheltered training
had done for her. "If she goes on irritating him like this he may murder
us both," she thought. What she really meant was that he might murder
Mrs. Wayne, but that, when he came to her and began to twist her neck,
she would just say, "My dear man, don't be silly!" and he would stop.

In the meantime Burke was not so angry as he was affecting to be. Like
most leaders of men, he had a strong dramatic instinct, and he had just
led Mrs. Wayne to the climax of her just violence when his manner
suddenly completely changed, and he said with the utmost good temper:

"And what do you think of my get-up, Mrs. Wayne? It's a new suit I have
on, and a boutonniere." The change was so sudden that no one answered,
and he went on, "It's clothes almost fit for a wedding that I'm wearing."