"That's right!" Calendar exclaimed blandly. "He's promised to see you home.
Now both of you will pardon my running away, I know."

"Yes," assented Kirkwood agreeably.

The elder man turned and hurried toward the main entrance.

Kirkwood took the chair he had vacated. To his disgust he found himself
temporarily dumb. No flicker of thought illuminated the darkness of his
confusion. How was he to open a diverting conversation with a young woman
whom he had met under auspices so extraordinary? Any attempt to gloze the
situation, he felt, would be futile. And, somehow, he did not care to
render himself ridiculous in her eyes, little as he knew her.

Inanely dumb, he sat watching her, smiling fatuously until it was borne
in on him that he was staring like a boor and grinning like an idiot.
Convinced, he blushed for himself; something which served to make him more
tongue-tied than ever.

As for his involuntary protegee, she exhibited such sweet composure that he
caught himself wondering if she really appreciated the seriousness of her
parent's predicament; if, for that matter, its true nature were known to
her at all. Calendar, he believed, was capable of prevarication, polite and
impolite. Had he lied to his daughter? or to Kirkwood? To both, possibly;
to the former alone, not improbably. That the adventurer had told him the
desperate truth, Kirkwood was quite convinced; but he now began to believe
that the girl had been put off with some fictitious explanation. Her
tranquillity and self-control were remarkable, otherwise; she seemed very
young to possess those qualities in such eminent degree.