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Losing and regaining sight of them at different turns in the trail, she made out, as she rode among the trees, that they were cowboys of her own ranch, and riding, under evident excitement, about a strange horseman. She recognized in the escort Stormy Gorman, the ferocious foreman of the ranch, and Denison and Jim Baugh, two of the most reckless of the men.
Ascher owes some kind of loyalty to a thing like that. It's a frightfully complicated question; but on the whole I think he is right." Gorman was not listening to me. He had ceased, for the time, to be interested in Ascher's decision. I tried to regain his attention. "Ascher says," I said, "that there is such a thing as the honour of a banker, of a financier."
"Maybe there'll be more blood in his veins than O'Brien's," Sullivan suggested significantly. Behane caught Gorman by the hair and twisted his head back, while Sullivan attempted to take possession of the sheath-knife. But Gorman clung to it desperately. "Lave go, an' I'll do ut!" he screamed frantically. "Don't be cuttin' me throat! I'll do the deed! I'll do the deed!"
But Gorman, in spite of his patriotism, has a good deal of the cosmopolitan about him. Strange foods and drinks upset him very little. "Doing anything this evening?" he asked. "If not will you spend it with me? Ascher has promised to come. We're going to a circus and on for supper afterwards. You remember the circus I mentioned to you on the steamer." I hesitated before I answered.
"I daresay you're right," said Steinwitz; "anyhow, in this case the authority wasn't one that I should care to rely on. It was Madame Ypsilante a very charming lady, but " He shrugged his shoulders. "I wouldn't care to bet my last shilling," said Gorman, "on the truth of a statement made by Madame Ypsilante."
"To leave it all and come with me?" she said; "away, away." Ascher did not speak; but she knew and I knew that his decision was not that. The scene was very painful. I felt that I had no right whatever to witness it Gorman, I am sure, would have been glad to escape. But it was very difficult for us to get away. Neither Ascher nor his wife seemed, conscious of our presence.
Ascher bowed towards me. Gorman described Ascher's manners as foreign. I daresay they are. There is a certain flavour of formal courtesy about them which Englishmen rarely practise, of which Irishmen of my generation, partly anglicised by their education, have lost the trick. "Sir James would only have been bored," said Ascher.
'You have told me already, Gorman, that your aunt gave you no other reason against coming here than that I had not been to call on you; and I believe you believe you thoroughly; but tell me now, with the same frankness, was there nothing passing in your mind had you no suspicions or misgivings, or something of the same kind, to keep you away? Be candid with me now, and speak it out freely.
"No tinned peaches," I said, "no bicycles." "And no Ascher," said Gorman. "Well," I said, "we can't go back." "In Ireland," he said, "we needn't go on. If we can only get clear of this cursed capitalistic civilisation of England that's what I mean by being a Home Ruler." "You think," I said, "that we should be too wise to accept the yoke of Ascher, to barter our freedom for tinned peaches."
Since the day Harvey Trueman became the attorney of the Paradise Coal Company, and the protege of Gorman Purdy, the young couple have been constant companions. They have been encouraged to seek each other's company by Mr. Purdy, who appreciated the worth of Harvey and who secretly hoped that the brilliant young lawyer would become one of his household.
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