Surely a girl who had, scarcely six weeks before,
sobbed in old Wambush's arms about her love for his son could not feel
anything deeply pertaining to another man whom she had known such a
short time.
"Let's go back," he proposed, suddenly, and almost brutally. "I reckon
we've gone far enough. Night comes on mighty quick here in the valley."
She raised her eyes to his in a half-frightened glance, and said:
"Yes; let's go back."
He turned his horse, and for fifteen minutes they drove along in
silence. There was now absolutely no pity in his heart. The vast
black problem of his own tortured love seemed to be soaking into him
from the very air about him.
He broke the silence.
"So you refused Bates?"
She looked at him again. "How did you know that?"
He laughed bitterly.
"He told me so; he's another fool."
"Mr. Westerfelt!"
"I beg your pardon," he amended, quickly; "but any man is a fool to be
simply crazy about a woman, and he is."
He saw her raise her little shapely hand to her twitching mouth and
experienced one instant's throbbing desire to catch it and hold it and
beg her to have mercy on him and help him throw off the hellish despair
that rested on him.
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