"Who is your papa?" he asked, with a bit of alarm stirring in
his breast, for he had no mind to offend any one of importance
where there was no need.

"I sha'n't tell you," came the petulant retort from the girl.
Her ivory forehead was wrinkled charmingly in a little frown of
obstinacy. "Why," she went on, displaying new symptoms of
distress over another appalling idea that flashed on her in this
moment, "you would probably give my name to the reporters." Once
again the rosebud mouth drooped into curves of sorrow, of a great
self-pity. "If it ever got into the newspapers, my family would
die of shame!"

The pathos of her fear pierced through the hardened crust of the
police official. He spoke apologetically.

"Now, the easiest way out for both of us," he suggested, "is for
you to tell me just who you are. You see, young lady, you were
found in the house of a notorious crook."

The haughtiness of the girl waxed. It seemed as if she grew an
inch taller in her scorn of the Inspector's saying.

"How perfectly absurd!" she exclaimed, scathingly. "I was calling
on Miss Mary Turner!"

"How did you come to meet her, anyhow?" Burke inquired. He
still held his big voice to a softer modulation than that to
which it was habituated.