"Nah!" The negative was drawn out contemptuously. "All she wants of Charlie is his vote for Burroughs. She never loved but one man in her life." A glance went to the senator, but he did not apply the words.
"Poor Winifred!" sighed the young man. The doctor caught the baptismal name.
"Winifred's a plucky woman. I'll wager she knows practically every move being made in all this rotten business—all," the old man added significantly. "Yet you would never mistrust it to see her. It is well to put on the cheerful face and tone, yet when in trouble is it best? It is deceiving to one's best friends, robbing them of the opportunity to extend sympathy. Winifred Blair is worrying over Charlie, yet she keeps her troubles to herself and cheats her friends of a just privilege."
"I wish," began Danvers, then closed his lips. No one should see his heart.
"I wish she would give you the right to protect her," said the doctor, heartily. "What has come between you two? I had thought——"
"I do not know," acknowledged the disconsolate lover. "She was friendly. We've seen each other quite a good deal. I thought she was one to understand. I cannot talk as most men do—I am aware of my failing."
His eyes were more eloquent than words, as he paused. "And now she hardly speaks to me—makes some trivial excuse to leave me with Charlie when I call; or if he is not there she pleads an engagement. You have noticed how Moore has been paying her marked attention? It is for her to choose——"
When Danvers began again it was of another phase of his trouble. "Miss Blair has doubtless heard of my financial loss, caused by that early snowstorm and later rain, which crusted the snow until my cattle were almost wiped out. My foreman wired me the night of the opera, you remember. Those that were not frozen were starved to death. My political life here in Helena is costing me a fortune."
Danvers rose and paced the floor. "It gives me the jigs, even to think of those cattle," he burst out. "Not the financial loss, you understand, but the suffering of dumb animals!"
"You did all you could, Phil."