But he began
to send me most extravagant presents. I suppose it was his
Oriental way of paying a compliment, but Dad objected."
"Of course he would. He knew his Orient and his Oriental. I
assume, Miss Abingdon, that you were in England during the years
that your father lived in the East?"
"Yes. I was at school. I have never been in the East."
Paul Harley hesitated. He found himself upon dangerously delicate
ground and was temporarily at a loss as to how to proceed.
Unexpected aid came from the taciturn Doctor McMurdoch.
"He never breathed a word of this to me, Phil," he said,
gloomily. "The impudence of the man! Small wonder Abingdon
objected."
Phil Abingdon tilted her chin forward rebelliously.
"Ormuz Khan was merely unfamiliar with English customs," she
retorted. "There was nothing otherwise in his behaviour to which
any one could have taken exception."
"What's that!" demanded the physician. "If a man of colour paid
his heathen attentions to my daughter--"
"But you have no daughter, Doctor."
"No. But if I had--"
"If you had," echoed Phil Abingdon, and was about to carry on
this wordy warfare which, Harley divined, was of old standing
between the two, when sudden realization of the purpose of the
visit came to her. She paused, and he saw her biting her lips
desperately. Almost at random he began to speak again.
"So far as you are aware, then, Miss Abingdon, Sir Charles never
met Ormuz Khan?"
"He never even saw him, Mr.
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