Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/142

130 Reed and Viola, who emerged from the entrance of a side aisle just in front of them.

The colonel's eye fell on Gault, his face beamed with recognition and pleasure, and, with a word to Viola, he started forward to greet him. Viola gave a vexed exclamation and caught him by the arm, evidently with the intention of deterring him. But the old man, flushed with the excitement of once more finding himself in the familiar scenes of light and revelry, seized her hand, and, drawing her with him, came forward. Viola, thus forcibly overruled, advanced, her face full of distressed embarrassment.

Gault, who had been occupied with the cloak, had not seen this little pantomime, and the first intimation he had of the colonel's proximity was his loud and patronizing greeting. He turned quickly and saw the old man, bland and majestic as ever, and beside him Viola, pained and uncomfortable, the object of Tod's admiring stares, and only too plainly dragged forward by her ill-inspired father. His face flushed with annoyance, aroused alike by the false position in which the girl was placed, and by the revelation thus made to Letitia that he had not been frank when he had led her to believe that he did not know Colonel Reed's daughter.

His indignation found expression in his cold