"Oh! it was gratitude," murmurs the young lady, "that brought you from California?" A moment after she coldly says: "That sentiment need not actuate you. I simply induced my father to do you justice," and from now on is very icy; for Erma Travenion demands the love, not the gratitude, of this young gentleman beside her.
This sudden change in his divinity astounds Lawrence, who has not been a student of woman's ways. Inadvertently he puts himself right again, for he suddenly says: "Did I know that I had anything to be grateful to you for, when I wandered about California seeking you—six weeks?"
"Oh!" cries the young lady, "that was before you knew my father was R. H. Tranyon, the Mormon bishop?" This last quite haughtily, for she has grown fearfully sensitive on this point since the conversation of the two mining gentlemen in Ogden.
"But," remarks Lawrence, "I know that now." Then, growing desperate, he blurts out: "Shall I tell you why I went to California?" and his voice grows very tender.
But the girl, suddenly rising, says with a curious mixture of haughtiness and humility, perhaps shame: "To whom do you wish to tell your tale?—Erma Travenion, of New York, or to Miss Tranyon, who has been called a Mormon 'gal,' and who is reported to be booked as the seventh wife of Bishop Kruger of Kammas Prairie?" Then she cries mockingly, almost savagely, "Which are you talking to?"
"To the girl I love!" cries Lawrence.
"O-oh!"
"To the girl I'd make my wife if she were the daughter of Beelzebub, and booked for the seventh consort of Satan!"
"O-o-o-oh!" With this sigh Erma sinks on the seat again; a moment after she suddenly smiles and murmurs: "Don't make my pedigree worse than it is!"
"Would you like to hear the tale I took with me to California, and have carried ever since in my heart?" says Harry, bending over this young lady, whose face is hiding its blushes, turned towards the car window, upon whose frosted panes her white finger is making figures.