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22 speaking with a marked lack of expression she replied:

"I fail to see why the public should be interested in knowing about so intimate and purely personal a matter."

"Hang the public! I'm not the public. I'm just Bill Steele, and I want to know."

"Then, Mr. Bill Steele, may I answer that it is none of your business?"

"Sure thing. No harm done at all. Next …"

"Next," she interrupted before he could go on, "you will please confine your desire for information to such matters as your paper has instructed you to get."

Steele's laughter startled her, booming out suddenly. A look of sheer wonder came into her eyes; she began to think the man mad.

"Paper!" He choked over the word. "Why bless your soul, my dear girl, I'm no more a newspaper man than you are. 'Fess up, now; can't you remember having heard of Bill Steele? Knew your father for years Bill Steele, mining engineer, gentleman of adverse fortune, lord of an empty pocket and a full heart? Come now; think."

A dead silence fell in the little luncheon room after the merry burst of Steele's laughter. Beatrice Corliss looked at him with a sort of horrified expression of incredulity in her eyes. Her gasp and Bradford's, twin signals of consternation, had been lost in her guest's echoing enjoyment of the situation.

"Bradford told me," she said, her voice at last a trifle uncertain, "that you were representing the New York Sun."