"Oh, it was quite all right for _me_" she replied mischievously to that look. "Only not for him. You see, he was masquerading--"
"Again?" thought McLean, involuntarily. Lord, what a hand for the lassies that lad was--and he had thought him such an aloof one!
"Masquerading as a woman--so he could take me to a reception."
Jinny began to falter. Just putting that escapade into words portrayed its less commendable features.
"It was a woman's reception," she began again, "at a Turkish house. A marriage reception--"
She had certainly secured McLean's whole-hearted attention.
"A marriage reception--a Turkish marriage reception?" he said very sharply and amazedly as his caller continued to pause. "Do you mean to say that Jack Ryder went into a Turkish house dressed as a woman--?"
There was a pronounced angularity of feature about the young Scotchman which now took on a chiseled sternness.
Swiftly Jinny interposed. "Oh, you mustn't blame him, Mr. McLean! You see, I wanted very much to go to a Turkish reception and I didn't have the courage to go alone or drag some other tourist as inexperienced as myself, and so Jack--why, there didn't seem any harm in his dressing up. Just for fun, you know. He put on a Turkish mantle and a veil up to his eyes and he was sure he'd never be found out. I ought not to have let him, I know--it was my fault--"
She looked so flushed and innocent and distressed that McLean's chivalry rose swiftly to her need.
"Indeed you mustn't blame yourself Miss--Miss Jeffries. You don't know Egypt--and Jack does. He knew that if he had been discovered there would have been no help for him--and no questions asked afterwards. And it might have been very dangerous for you. The blame is just his now," he said decisively, yet not without a certain weak-kneed sympathy with the culprit.
For if the girl had looked like this ... he could see that she would be a difficult little piece to withstand ... though any man with an ounce of sense in his head would have behaved as a responsible protector and not as a reckless school boy.
"Oh, nothing happened--nothing that I know of. We got along very well, I thought, although now I remember that some people _did_ stare.... But I wasn't worried at the time. I thought it was just because I was an American and he was apparently a Turkish woman, but there was no reason why an American might not get a Turkish woman to act as a guide, was there?... And then Jack told me to go home first--he said it would be simpler that way and that he would slip over to some friend's or to some safe place and take his disguise off. He wore a gray suit beneath it, and the only funny thing was some black tennis shoes.... So I left him. And he hasn't been back since."