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Pagan should, so soon as the waiter's footsteps had passed, vented the
cream of his feelings in a stream of blasphemous indecency. Whether his
wife or HER stepmother had sent the detective, SHE had evidently gone
off with him, and that little business was over. And he was here,
stranded and sold, an ass, and as it were, the son of many generations
of asses. And his only ray of hope was that it seemed more probable,
after all, that the girl had escaped through her stepmother. In
which case the business might be hushed up yet, and the evil hour of
explanation with his wife indefinitely postponed. Then abruptly the
image of that lithe figure in grey knickerbockers went frisking across
his mind again, and he reverted to his blasphemies. He started up in a
gusty frenzy with a vague idea of pursuit, and incontinently sat down
again with a concussion that stirred the bar below to its depths. He
banged the arms of the chair with his fist, and swore again. "Of all the
accursed fools that were ever spawned," he was chanting, "I, Bechamel--"
when with an abrupt tap and prompt opening of the door, Stephen entered
with the Bourbon.
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