Rosalind Thornton stood before Dade Morgan, her pretty lips trembling.
He had made an evening call on her at the residence of her aunt, and was now on the point of taking an early leave. They were standing together at the foot of the stairs, under the red globe of the swinging hall-lamp near the outer door.
“You don’t know how pretty you are in that mood, Rose! But perhaps you do know? It tempts me to steal a kiss.”
Rosalind Thornton was, indeed, a pretty girl, and never more so than at that moment. A flash of hurt pride made her winsomely attractive—so attractive that Morgan almost relented from the purpose he had formed in his heart.
She drew back and put out a little hand.
“You have no right to say such things to me!”
There was a glow of fire behind the unshed tears. Morgan laughed in his usual reckless, nonchalant way, and hurt Rose by saying roughly:
“Well, I didn’t call to take you out riding this afternoon, as I promised to do—because I didn’t care to!”
How handsome he was as he stood there looking at her with eyes as dark as her own. She was as fully alive to his good looks as he was to hers. There was a mysterious something in his strong, athletic form; in the resolute face, smiling mouth, and white, even teeth. Dade Morgan was undeniably a handsome youth, aside from a trick he had of dropping his lids down over his eyes, to shut out the strange glitter that occasionally took the beauty out of them.
It was the magnetism of his beauty and strength that had made pretty Rosalind Thornton willing to hurt the honest heart of big Dick Starbright—had made her willing to turn from him and accept the pleasant company of this man, who was his confessed and deadly enemy.