“Then let him apologize to you,” St. Jacques suggested, laughing. “He has no right to put himself in the wrong so far as to make you feel it worth your while to be rude to him.”
Nancy laughed in her turn.
“M. St. Jacques, you do not like Mr. Barth,” she said merrily.
“No, Miss Howard; I do not. It will be a happy day for me, when he takes himself out to his ranch.”
“But I shall have gone, long before that,” she said thoughtfully.
St. Jacques turned upon her with a suddenness which startled her.
“So soon as that?”
“Sooner. Three or four weeks more here will see the end of our stay.”
The blood rolled hotly upward across his swarthy face. Then it rolled back again, leaving behind it a pallor that brought his thin lips and resolute chin into strong relief.
“I am sorry,” he said slowly. “I thought you had come to stay.”