"I enjoyed it much," she answered, quietly. "It was very exciting; and very interesting, too."
"Ah; I presume so. And your escort took good care of you--made you quite comfortable, I suppose."
Mr. Vennor leaned back in his chair and regarded her gravely through the swirls of blue smoke curling upward from his cigar. "Didn't it strike you as being rather--ah--a girlish thing for you to do? in the night, you know, and with a comparative stranger?"
Gertrude thought the battle was about to open, and began to throw up hasty fortifications. "Mr. Brockway is not a stranger; you may remember that we became quite well acquainted----"
"Pardon me," the President interrupted; "that is precisely the point at which I wished to arrive--your present estimate of this young man. I have nothing to say about your little diversion on the engine. You are old enough to settle these small questions of the proprieties for yourself. But touching this young mechanic, it might be as well for us to understand each other. Have you fully considered the probable consequences of your most singular infatuation?"
It was a ruthless question, and the hot blood of resentment set its signals flying in Gertrude's cheeks. Up to that evening, she had thought of the passenger agent only as an agreeable young man of a somewhat unfamiliar type, of whom she would like to know more; but Brockway's moment of abandonment in the cab of the 926 had planted a seed which threatened to germinate quickly in the warmth of the present discussion.
"I'm not quite sure that I understand you," she said, picking and choosing among the phrases for the least incendiary. "Would you mind telling me in so many words, just what you mean?"
"Not in the least. A year ago you met this young man in a most casual way, and--to put it rather brutally--fell in love with him. I haven't the slightest idea that he cares anything for you in your proper person, or that he would have thrust himself upon us to-day if he had known that your private fortune hangs upon the event of your marriage under certain conditions which you evidently purpose to ignore. If, after the object-lesson you had at the dinner-table this evening, you still prefer this young fortune-hunter to your cousin Chester, I presume we shall all have to submit; but you ought at least to tell us what we are to expect."