"At the pool! You! My
bairnie!" Then, with sudden outburst of passionate wrath, "Go to your
room!" said he.
"But listen--father, dear," she began, imploringly. For answer he
seized her slender arm in almost brutal grasp and fairly hurled her
within the doorway. "Not a word!" he ground between his clinched
teeth. "Go instantly!" Then, slamming the door upon her, he whirled
about as though to seek his sister's face, and saw beyond her,
rounding the corner of the northwest set of quarters, coming in from
the _mesa_ roadway at the back, the tall, white figure of the missing
man.
Another moment and Lieutenant Blakely, in the front room of his
quarters, looking pale and strange, was being pounced upon with eager
questioning by Duane, his junior, when the wooden steps and veranda
creaked under a quick, heavy, ominous tread, and, with livid face and
clinching hands, the troop commander came striding in.
"Mr. Blakely," said he, his voice deep with wrath and tremulous with
passion, "I told you three days ago my daughter and you must not meet,
and--you know why! To-day you lured her to a rendezvous outside the
post--"
"Captain Wren!"
"Don't lie! I say you lured her, for my lass would never have met
you--"
"You shall _un_say it, sir," was Blakely's instant rejoinder. "Are you
mad--or what? I never set eyes on your daughter to-day--until a moment
ago.
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