CHAPTER XVIII
A PAINFUL BUSINESS
Before a week was out Gutermann had every reason to believe himself intimate with us. He was a pale, gentle fellow, looking very little like the intrepid financier who could raven along with Honest John Driver and Albert Amsted Pudleigh. Indeed we were sorry that he never once showed the cloven hoof of the financier at the bottom of the well-fitting trouser-legs of the British gentleman: it would have made us feel happier about his kidnapping. He saw some, or all, of us every day; we dined with him and he with us, and we played many rubbers of Bridge together. His admiration of Angel grew and grew, a hardy flower that needed no fostering from her. It got none; and I reckoned her power of maintaining a civility so equal and so bare a proof of considerable genius. Her attitude excited my curiosity, and I asked her how she could bring herself to give him no encouragement, when a hopeless infatuation on his part might prove so useful to us.
She knitted her brow and her chin set somewhat obstinate: "I will never do it—never," she said
