The room was well adapted to this, filled as it was with comfortable chairs
arranged with apparent carelessness two by two. The men lighted cigars.
Keith saw Nan's eyes widen at this. She was sitting near the fire, and
Sansome had penned her in beyond the possibility of invasion by a third. At
this date smoking was a more or less doubtfully considered habit, and in
the best society men smoked only in certain rigidly specified
circumstances. In a drawing-room such an action might be considered the
fair equivalent to powdering the feminine nose.

In such a condition, Keith was left rather awkwardly alone, and was fairly
thrust upon a fictitious interest in a photograph album, at which he
glowered for some moments. Then by a well-planned and skilfully executed
flank movement he caught Mrs. Morrell.

"Look here," he demanded; "what has the standing army done to deserve
abandonment in a hostile country?"

But she looked at him directly, without response to his playful manner.

"My friend," she said, "this is a pretty free and easy town, as no doubt
you have observed, and society is very mixed. But we haven't yet come to
receiving women like Mrs. Sherwood, or relishing their being mentioned to
us."

"Why, what's the matter with her?" demanded Keith, astonished. "Is she as
far from respectability as all that?"

"Respectable! That word isn't understood in San Francisco." She appeared
suddenly to soften. "You're a dear innocent boy, so you are, and you've got
a dear innocent little wife, and I'll have to look out for you."