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Updated: May 1, 2025
Her attitude held his attention and set him wondering, for he thought of her always as the embodiment of laughter, good-humor, and exuberant youth. Of all the women he ever had known, either well or casually, she had seemed the farthest from moods or nerves or anything even dimly suggestive of the neurasthenic. Moved by an impulse Van Lennop laid down his book and went below.
Van Lennop smiled, for in his mind's eye he could see the tense aggressiveness of her slim figure. "Chentleman!" was the contemptuous snort. "Chentleman and never buy de drinks for nobody all de time he is in Crowheart. Fine chentleman dat!" "When do you buy any?" was the pointed inquiry. "I haf to work for my money; his comes easy," he replied significantly. "You said that before."
Van Lennop had told her of his invitation in amusement and later had remarked carelessly that he might accept, but apparently had given it no further thought. Even in her unhappiness the girl was fair to her merciless enemy. She looked well far, far more attractive than Essie would have believed possible, softer, more feminine and more dangerous.
So he was asking Essie Tisdale to marry him this old Edouard Dubois with the bullet-shaped head and the brutal face that Van Lennop had found so objectionable upon each occasion that he had been his vis-a-vis in the dining-room?
Wonder how she'll enjoy spending her honeymoon about forty feet from Dubois's shearing-pens," she sniggered. "Well, no matter what comes up in the future, I've settled her; she's out of the way for good and all, and I've kept my word she'll never marry Ogden Van Lennop!" Yet she was aware that there was hollowness in her triumph that it was marred by a nameless fear which she refused to admit.
There was a girlish shyness in her fluttering glance, honesty in the depths of her limpid hazel eyes, while her white, unmarred forehead suggested the serenity of a good woman, and Van Lennop was dimly conscious that for some undefined reason he never had thought of her as that.
For reasons of his own Van Lennop finally decided to accept the invitation which at first thought he fully intended to refuse. He figured that he had time to telegraph for his clothes, and this he did with the result that Crowheart stared as hard almost at him as at Dr. Harpe's amazing transformation.
"And yet," said Van Lennop, "I'm somehow glad you are. But what has happened? Who has hurt you? Did something go wrong at this wonderful dinner of which you told me? Were you not after all quite the prettiest girl there?" "I wasn't asked!" Van Lennop's eyes widened. "You were not? Why, I thought the belle of Crowheart was always asked."
While her husky rendition of the solo parts of certain anthems was strongly suggestive of the Bijou Theatre with its adjoining beer garden, her efforts were highly praised. This invitation demonstrated clearly that Mrs. Tutts was rising in the social scale. It was due to a suggestion from Dr. Harpe, made through Augusta, that Van Lennop also received his first social recognition in Crowheart.
To shorten the long hours which must intervene before he could expect a reply from Crowheart, Van Lennop ordered his saddle horse and rode to the mine, where a rascally superintendent had stripped the ore shoot and departed with everything but the machinery.
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