Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/339

 SAT staring at the girl with the swan's-down about her swany young neck. She seemed to feel that I ought to agree with her. But it wasn't easy for me to go on. For I knew, now, that Pinky McClone, the con-man and ex-river pirate, and Michael O'Toole, the rescuer of pin-feather heiresses, were one and the same person.

"And you," I finally ventured, "you seemed to feel that you owed him that?"

It began to dawn on me that this long-muffled young lady was not altogether sorry to encounter a sympathetic listener.

"He deserves it!" she said with decision. "He did a noble thing. He did the only big thing that ever happened in all my life. He did everything, risked everything, to save my life. And I knew that I ought to be ready to risk everything to make him happy!"

I looked at that young girl in white, with the swan's-down about her neck, and I pondered how much of her poor little hothouse life must have been –