Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/228

 about Mr. Preserved Higgins part in it, but that he himself …

“Well, Mr. Wade, you know that I've quite a little pull with the British government. What you need is rifles and ammunition and supplies, and I'll make it my affair to see that you get them. On the other hand—well—I am a business man, not an altruist, and so …”

And he talked on, outlining his plan.

But Hector was hardly listening. Loverlike, he saw in Mr. Warburton's gray, ascetic features a shadowy and sentimental resemblance to a little oval of a face, crowned by a mass of hair that was like curled sunlight; he wondered about Jane, and, with single-minded, self-centered English tactlessness, he voiced his wonder the next moment, cutting through Mr. Warburton's intricate sentence, which was filled to the brim with rates of interest and difficulties of transportation and unearned increment and sinking fund and similar financial details.

“How is your daughter, Mr. Warburton?”

And, suddenly, Mr. Warburton smiled.

It was not that he had forgotten about Jane. He couldn't very well, for her personality was too femininely insistent. But, momentarily, her picture had become rather blurred in the mazes of dollars and cents.

So he smiled, just a little guiltily.

“The joke is on me,” he said. “That infernal Baluchi guide of mine told me that you were—oh—all sorts of a gay and festive dog.”

Hector flared up.