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Van Lennop was still to be reckoned with. His telegram had reminded her forcibly of that. The muffled sound of galloping hoofs in the sand caused her to raise her chin from her chest and her mind became instantly alert. It would be a relief to exchange a word with some one, she thought, and wondered vaguely at the swiftness of the gait upon so hot a day.
The news has only come out that the Symes's Irrigation Company is going into a Receiver's hands and the bondholders will foreclose their mortgages. Look down in the street. There's a mob of workmen from the project and the creditors of your friend Symes considering how they best can extract blood from a turnip. For some reason of his own Van Lennop has gone after Symes's scalp and got it.
She came toward them with her head erect and a set look upon her young, almost childish face, and Van Lennop catching sight of her intuitively guessed something of her thoughts and interpreted aright the strained look upon her white face. "She thinks me disloyal," flashed into his mind, and he all but smiled at the idea.
He had found it quite useless to assure Van Lennop that he need not trouble himself to call as any telegram would be delivered immediately upon its receipt, also he had been long enough in the service to know that young Americans of Van Lennop's type did not ordinarily become so intense over a matter of business.
Harpe came quickly, her hair loose about her shoulders, looking younger and more girlish in a soft negligee than Van Lennop had ever seen her. She saw the faint shade of prejudice cross his face as she entered, but satisfaction was in her own. Her chance had come at last in this unexpected way. "Snakes," she said laconically. "Yes," Van Lennop replied with equal brevity. "I'll have to quiet him.
Now that the opportunity to "square herself," to use her own words, had arrived, she had no notion of letting it pass. "He seems in a bad way," Van Lennop said at last in a formal tone. "It had to come the clip he was going," she replied, seating herself on the edge of the bed and wiping the moisture from his forehead with the corner of the sheet.
"An old man's darling" "Serpent he had warmed in his bosom" "Weltering in his blood" all the trite phrases and vulgarisms of country journalism were used to tell the sensational story which sickened Van Lennop as he read: "The arrest of the murdered patriarch's beautiful bride is expected hourly, as the leading citizens of Crowheart are clamoring for justice and are bringing strong pressure to bear upon Sheriff Treu, who seems strangely reluctant to act."
A letter which came in the morning mail from a schoolmate in the East, read: DEAR EMMY: I have just learned through the papers here that Ogden Van Lennop is "roughing it" in your country and I thought I'd write and give you a hint in case you come across him. Grab him, my dear, if you have the ghost of a show, for he is the most eligible man in seven states.
Van Lennop saw only her as he came toward her with outstretched hands, speaking her name with the yearning tenderness with which he had spoken it to himself a hundred times "Essie Essie Tisdale!" He kissed her, and she yielded, as though there were no need for words between them. "But my letter? My telegram? Why didn't you answer?" Her eyes widened with astonishment. "Your letter! Your telegram!"
There was something in the girl she could not crush, but more disquieting than that was the fact that her isolation seemed only to cement the friendship between her and Van Lennop, while her own progressed no farther than a bowing acquaintance. His imperturbable politeness formed a barrier she was too wise to attempt to cross until another opportune time arrived.
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