CHAPTER XXVIII
"WHERE IS BEATRICE?"
UNDER the circumstances there could have been nothing more natural than Beatrice's turning to Embry, knowing that Steele's eyes were upon her. And yet, wishing to anger him, she could little understand how her act was to bring fulfilment to her desire far beyond her expectation. The very word, angry, became pale and insufficient; in thorough going Anglo-Saxon way and phrase, she had made him mad.
Mad, with the yearning to seize her away from Embry, to hold her back from the contamination of the man's very presence, once and for all to wipe the man he hated from her path. That Embry had been the cause of Hurley's and Turk's injuries, that he had fired Indian City through his agents, that he had in the same manner brutally beaten Wendall and robbed him in Selby Flat, of all this Bill Steele was very sure. And yet for a little he held himself in check and watched Embry and Beatrice pass down through the checker-board of light and shadow on the long veranda until they disappeared at the far corner of the house.
For he knew, even with the rush of hot blood along his arteries, that that man who hopes to handle a difficult situation must first have himself in hand. What things might he cry out now to regret afterward if he followed where his heart went?
305
