"
"A station-agent's taste in women friends--" began Marrineal, and
forbore unnecessarily to finish.
"Possibly it has improved. Or--well, at any rate, there was something
there. My railroad man thinks the affair drove Banneker out of his job.
The fact of his being woman-proof here points to its having been
serious."
"There was a girl out there about that time visiting Camilla Van
Arsdale," remarked Marrineal carelessly; "a New York girl. One of the
same general set. Miss Van Arsdale used to be a New Yorker and rather a
distinguished one."
Too much master of his devious craft to betray discomfiture over
another's superior knowledge of a subject which he had tried to make his
own, Ely Ives remarked:
"Then she was probably the real thing. The princess on vacation. You
don't know who she was, I suppose," he added tentatively.
Marrineal did not answer, thereby giving his factotum uncomfortably to
reflect that he really must not expect payment for information and the
information also.
"I guess he'll bear watching." Ives wound up with his favorite
philosophy.
It was a few days after this that, by a special interposition of kindly
chance, Ives, having returned from a trip out of town, saw Banneker and
Io breakfasting in the station restaurant.
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