MR. HEREFORD ENTERTAINS
19
"Of course you are quite disinterested in coming to tell me this—quite disinterested, Mr. Annis? They always are," Hereford said unpleasantly.
"I learned these facts in Java, as I said; and being on my way to New York I believed it only the part of a countryman of Miss Regan's to make sure that whoever was protecting her knew them too. I believed you might consider it your duty to interfere. If I have made a mistake and wasted my time I beg your pardon."
Hereford considered that a man living long among inferior and despised races—holding, perhaps, his memory of American women as an ideal—would undoubtedly act as Annis had just done.
"But if these are facts," he said uneasily, "why have I heard nothing of them? Less
