Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/24



, what do you think of it all?" repeated Whittaker. He rubbed his bald forehead with a plump hand and cast birdlike glances at the girl beside him.

Whittaker flattered himself that he could tell a good story well, and that, having trotted over most of the globe, he had good stories to tell. Moreover the finest young woman of the Château had been listening to him attentively.

In the upper corridors of the Château music echoed from the orchestra of the ballroom, popular music with a tang to it. Whittaker's eyes had watched the girl's slippered foot tracing a dainty accompaniment. But she had smiled away several men who had come up to urge her to dance—had refused them, to listen to him. Whittaker glowed.

"Did it really happen, Mr. Whittaker?"

He liked the way her words slurred together softly, after the manner of the women born in the South of the United States. Whittaker believed that he was an excellent judge of women. So he permitted himself to admire the girl's tawny hair, dressed low on her neck, almost touching her bare shoulders.

She carried herself devilishly well, he thought, and had a haughty eye. Came of one of the oldest Southern families, Kentucky, he believed, and knew it. Her father was rich. They went the round of Fifth