"He is the staunchest friend conceivable.No trouble is too great forhim to take for one he likes, and where once he gives his trust he does not take it back.Oh, for all his force, he is intensely human! Take his vanity, my dear.It soars to heaven.""If I cared for him I couldn't dissect his qualities as you do.""That's because you are a triumph of the survival of nature and impulse over civilization, in spite of its attempts to sap your freshness.For me, I fear I'm a sophisticated daughter of a critical generation.If I weren't, I should not hold my judgment so safely in my own keeping, but would surrender it and my heart.""There is something about the way you look at him that shocks me.One ought not to let oneself believe all that seems easy to believe.""That is your faith, but mine is a different one.You see, I'm a Unitarian," returned Virginia blithely.
"He will make you love him if you marry him," sighed Aline, coming back to her obsession.
Virginia nodded eagerly."In my secret heart that is what I am hoping for, my dear.""Unless there is another man," added Aline, as if alone with her thoughts.
Virginia was irritably aware of a flood of color beating into her cheeks."There isn't any other man," she said impatiently.
Yet she thought of Lyndon Hobart.Curiously enough, whenever she conceived herself as marrying Ridgway, the reflex of her brain carried to her a picture of Hobart, clean-handed, fine of instinct, with the inherited inflections of voice and unconscious pride of caste that come from breeding and not from cultivation.If he were not born to greatness, like his rival, at least he satisfied her critical judgment of what a gentleman should be; and she was quite sure that the potential capacity lay in her to care a good deal more for him than for anybody else she had met.Since it was not on the cards, as Miss Virginia had shuffled the pack, that she should marry primarily for reasons sentimental, this annoyed her in her sophisticated hours.
But in the hours when she was a mere girl when she was not so confidently the heir of all the feminine wisdom of the ages, her annoyancetook another form.She had told Lyndon Hobart of her engagement because it was the honest thing to do; because she supposed she ought to discourage any hopes he might be entertaining.But it did not follow that he need have let these hopes be extinguished so summarily.She could have wished his scrupulous regard for the proper thing had not had the effect of taking him so completely out of her external life, while leaving him more insistently than ever the subject of her inner contemplation.
Virginia's conscience was of the twentieth century and American, though she was a good deal more honest with herself than most of her sex in the same social circle.Also she was straightforward with her neighbors so far as she could reasonably be.But she was not a Puritan in the least, though she held herself to a more rigid account than she did her friends.She judged her betrothed as little as she could, but this was not to be entirely avoided, since she expected her life to become merged so largely in his.There were hours when she felt she must escape the blighting influence of his lawlessness.There were others when it seemed to her magnificent.
Except for the occasional jangle of a bit or the ring of a horse's shoe on a stone, there was silence which lasted many minutes.Each was busy with her thoughts, and the narrowness of the trail, which here made them go in single file, served as an excuse against talk.
"Perhaps we had better turn back," suggested Virginia, after the path had descended to a gulch and merged itself in a wagon-road."We shall have no more than time to get home and dress for dinner."Aline turned her pony townward, and they rode at a walk side by side."Do you know much about the difficulty between Mr.Harley and Mr.
Ridgway? I mean about the mines--the Sherman Bell, I think they called it?""I know something about the trouble in a general way.Both the Consolidated and Mr.Ridgway's company claim certain veins.That is true of several mines, I have been told.""I don't know anything about business.Mr.Harley does not tell me anything about his.To day I was sitting in the open window, and two men stopped beneath it.They thought there would be trouble in this mine--thatmen would be hurt.I could not make it all out, but that was part of it.I sent for Mr.Harley and made him tell me what he knew.It would be dreadful if anything like that happened.""Don't worry your head about it, my dear.Things are always threatening and never happening.It seems to be a part of the game of business to bluff, as they call it.""I wish it weren't," sighed the girl-wife.
Virginia observed that she looked both sad and weary.She had started on her ride like a prisoner released from his dungeon, happy in the sunshine, the swift motion, the sting of the wind in her face.There had been a sparkle in her eye and a ring of gaiety in her laugh.Into her cheeks a faint color had glowed, so that the contrast of their clear pallor with the vivid scarlet of the little lips had been less pronounced than usual.But now she was listless and distraite, the girlish abandon all stricken out of her.It needed no clairvoyant to see that her heart was heavy and that she was longing for the moment when she could be alone with her pain.
Her friend had learned what she wanted to know, and the knowledge of it troubled her.She would have given a good deal to have been able to lift this sorrow from the girl riding beside her.For she was aware that Aline Harley might as well have reached for the moon as that toward which her untutored heart yearned.She had come to life late and traveled in it but a little way.Yet the tragedy of it was about to engulf her.No lifeboat was in sight.She must sink or swim alone.Virginia's unspoiled heart went out to her with a rush of pity and sympathy.Almost the very words that Waring Ridgway had used came to her lips.
"You poor lamb! You poor, forsaken lamb!"But she spoke instead with laughter and lightness, seeing nothing of the girl's distress, at least, until after they separated at the door of the hotel.
