“Why?” she snapped, plainly annoyed at my lightness of tone.
“Because he can’t possibly have both of us, you know—unless he’s willing to migrate over to that Mormon colony at Red-Deer. And even there, I understand, they’re not doing it now.”
“I’m afraid this is something much too serious to joke about,” Lady Alicia informed me.
“But it strikes me as essentially humorous,” I told her.
“I’m afraid,” she countered, “that it’s apt to prove essentially tragic.”
“But he happens to be my husband,” I observed.
“Only in form, I fancy, if he cares for some one else,” was her ladyship’s deliberate reply.
“Then he has acknowledged that—that you’ve captured him?” I inquired, slowly but surely awakening to the sheer audacity of the lady in the buckskin gauntlets.
“Isn’t that rather—er—primitive?” inquired Lady Allie, paler than ever.
“If you mean coming and squabbling over another woman’s husband, I’d call it distinctly prehistoric,” I said with a dangerous little red light dancing before my eyes. “It’s so original that it’s aboriginal. But I’m still at a loss to know just what your motive is, or what you want.”