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Corliss was not troubled. Richard had disliked him as a boy; did not like him now; but Corliss had not taken his money out of malice for that. The adventurer was not revengeful; he was merely impervious.
Hedrick flattened himself in a corner just inside the door. "I should break any engagement whatsoever if I had one," Mr. Corliss was saying with what the eavesdropper considered an offensively "foreign" accent and an equally unjustifiable gallantry; "but of course I haven't: I am so utterly a stranger here.
Corliss concluded his momentary pause by walking up the broken cement path, which was hard beset by plantain-weed and the long grass of the ill-kept lawn. Ascending the steps, he was assailed by an odour as of vehement bananas, a diffusion from some painful little chairs standing in the long, high, dim, rather sorrowful hall disclosed beyond the open double doors.
Corliss was the length of the room from her, chatting gayly with a large group of girls and women; but he immediately nodded to her, made his bow to individuals of the group, and crossed the vacant, glistening floor to her. Cora gave him no greeting whatever; she dismissed her former partner and carelessly turned away with Corliss to some chairs in a corner.
"Do you know," said Ray slowly, glancing over his glass at his nervous companion, "it doesn't strike me that Mr. Valentine Corliss has much the air of a marrying man." "He has the air to me," observed Mr. Trumble, "of a darned bad lot! But I have to hand it to him: he's a wizard. He's got something besides his good looks a man that could get Cora Madison interested in `business'! In oil!
She waved her parasol with careless gayety to the trio under the trees, and, going on, was lost to their sight. "Hello!" exclaimed Corliss, looking at his watch with a start of surprise. "I have two letters to write for the evening mail. I must be off."
His mother was a widow; she went abroad to live and took him with her when he was about your age, and I don't think he's ever been back since." "Did he use to live in this house?" "No; an aunt of his did. She left it to him when she died, two years ago. Your father was agent for her." "You think this Corliss wants to sell it?" "It's been for sale all the time he's owned it.
"Now I reckon we'll ride over to the rancho and see if Loring wants any more of it." Silently the rancher and his men rode toward the water-hole. As they drew near the line fence, the Mexican riders, swinging in a wide circle, spurred to head them off. "Hold on!" shouted Corliss. "We'll pull up and wait for 'em." "Suits me," said Wingle, loosening his gun from the holster.
Tudor in his private office, relating minutely the disappearance of his infant daughter, as told him by the dying housekeeper, Mrs. Corliss. "I will make you a rich man for life," he cried, vehemently, "if you can trace my long-lost child, either dead or alive!" Mr. Tudor shook his head. "I am inclined to think there is little hope, after all these years."
She liked him for himself, for that something which refused to stand out as a part, or a sum of parts; for that something which is the corner-stone of Faith and which has ever baffled Philosophy and Science. And further, to like, with Frona Welse, did not mean to love. First, and above all, Vance Corliss was drawn to Frona Welse because of the clamor within him for a return to the soil.
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