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Updated: June 14, 2025
Haney's wealth made her conspicuous from afar, while her youth and boyish beauty had been the subject of admiring club talk from the very first. Haney was only an old and wounded animal, whose mate was free to choose anew. "It makes me ache to see the girl go wrong," said Mrs.
She could no longer endure the clasp of his hand, and in spite of herself she was forced, by contrasting experience, to acknowledge the allurement which lay in Ben Fordyce's handsome face and strong and graceful body. "I must go away for a while at least. I'll go back to the ranch and think it over." And yet even the ranch was partly Haney's! How could she escape from her indebtedness to him?
Her first impulse was for flight, so sad and bitter was his face. She began to pity him. His boyhood seemed to have slipped from him like a gay cloak, revealing the stern man beneath. He met her gravely, self-containedly, yet with restrained passion, and his voice was sternly calm as he began: "I have come to ask you what you wish to do with Marshall Haney's inheritance?
With bewildering swiftness the experiences of a woman of the world were advancing upon her, and she, with no brother or father to be her guard, or friend to give her character, with a husband whose very name and face were injuries, was finding men in the centres of culture quite as predatory as among the hills, where Mart Haney's fame still made his glance a warning.
Haney's return cut short this defensive dialogue, and with a sense of relief Bertha retreated almost fled to her room leaving the two men to discuss their business. At the moment she had no wish to participate in a labor controversy. She was entirely the woman at last, roused to the overpowering value of her own inheritance.
There was a gangling figure walking down the concrete path between the trim, monotonous cottages that were officers' quarters at the Shed. Joe said sharply: "That's Haney! What's he doing here?" He called, "Haney!" Haney's manner took on purpose. He came across the grass the lawns around the officers' quarters contained the only grass in twenty miles. "Hiya," said Haney uncomfortably.
This question sent a thrill to the heart of each of the three young people listening a thrill of fear, of doubt. And Ben said, slowly, perceiving Haney's fatherly good-will: "Yes, we expect to set up housekeeping, as the old-fashioned people say, as soon as Alice is a little stronger." "Very well, then," Haney went on like one who has made his point, "here's your chance.
This was a lie, but Haney's sympathy was roused. "There'll always be an empty chair for you," he repeated, with a feeling that he, too, was encouraging art. Humiston pursued this game with singular and joyous skill. He talked of the West and of politics with the Captain, and of love and art and his essentially lonely life to Bertha. He returned often to the wish that they might meet in Paris.
Howard was gone before this, but there was Brannan's writing-case in Haney's possession, why not throw further suspicion upon him? and so there were the papers hidden in the hopes of further damning him should he ever appear as a witness against them.
"Oh no; I'm afraid if she were a poor girl she'd find these same people still more indifferent." "True, miss. But would they act the same if she were Mart Haney's widow?" She flashed a deep-piercing, wondering glance at him. "Ah, that would be different. And yet," she hastened to say, "that would not make her acceptable to the really best people." "What would, miss?" he asked, simply.
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