"You know, 'pon my word, Brimmer, she's a very superior woman," gasped
Markham excitedly, when the goddess had temporarily withdrawn. "These
fellows here," he said, indicating the audience contemptuously, "don't
know her,--think she's all that sort of thing, you know,--and come here
just to LOOK at her. But she's very accomplished--in fact, a kind of
literary woman. Writes devilish good poetry--only took up the stage
on account of domestic trouble: drunken husband that beat her--regular
affecting story, you know. These sap-headed fools don't, of course,
know THAT. No, sir; she's a remarkable woman! I say, Brimmer, look here!
I"--he hesitated, and then went on more boldly, as if he had formed a
sudden resolution. "What have you got to do to-night?"
Brimmer, who had been lost in abstraction, started slightly, and said,--
"I--oh! I've got an appointment with Keene. You know he's off by the
steamer--day after to-morrow?"
"What! He's not going off on that wild-goose chase, after all? Why, the
man's got Excelsior on the brain!" He stopped as he looked at Brimmer's
cold face, and suddenly colored. "I mean his plan--his idea's all
nonsense--you know that!"
"I certainly don't agree with him," began Brimmer gravely; "but"--
"The idea," interrupted Markham, encouraged by Brimmer's beginning, "of
his knocking around the Gulf of California, and getting up an expedition
to go inland, just because a mail-steamer saw a barque like the
Excelsior off Mazatlan last August.
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