His mobile eyebrows went up at an acute angle of amazement. "Oh," he said at length, as if suddenly bethinking himself, "that happy man's name is 'Boyd'—not Lloyd. The similarity is giving us no end of confusion,—the gossips are all off the track. No, no," he added, "for myself I have nothing more serious on hand than a cruise in the Gulf,—my yacht is lying-to for supplies across the bend." He turned and glanced out at the great Mississippi, at high water resembling some vast lake, it stretched out so far, and the vermilion sphere of the sun, slowly sinking, made a great sheen of red glister on its murky rippling expanse. They could both see the smoke rising from the funnel of a yacht lying below the point where a fringe of pecan trees cut off the view, and a noisy bevy of green parroquets flitted in and out in search of nuts. "It struck my fancy, while waiting, to come ashore and view my possessions here."
He had thrust his hat back on his head and she winced as his look of critical, supercilious disparagement wandered cynically about the dreary, shabby, neglected little farmhouse.
"So this is the palatial home which you thought I had done you the honour to offer to you," he said, smiling ironically.
"Oh, don't—don't guy it,"—she cried with a sharp accent of pain, remembering her visions.
She had not kept the control of her nerves; she was consciously embarrassed and flushing painfully. She felt his intent eyes on her face, and she averted her own and looked up at the sunset aglow on the tiny panes of the blurred cheap glass of the windows.
"You thought little enough of it once," he said hardily,—he had acquired an assurance, doubtless through much adulation, which kept him from the fear of misapprehension,—"even after you had learned that it was not to be a home of poverty,—yes, indeed," he continued with an accession of bitterness, "you took pains to convince me that even wealth was powerless to commend me. I am not sensitive—but there was no need to turn and turn the knife in the wound."
He gave a short, angry sigh. "Well,—it is all over. I never meant to persecute you with my protestations again. I knew then that Mrs. Laniston urged you to reconsider,—that she would leave no stone unturned. I never expected to see you again,—and yet it is a melancholy pleasure,"—he looked at her with a sad smile in his eyes,—"and I take it mighty kindly of you that you don't deride the little place that you thought was the home I offered you."
"I love it," she cried with a gush of tears. "I have never regretted it but once,—and that was every moment and all the time, since I let a word of counsel,—a well meant word though it was,"—she hastily stipulated, "close its doors upon me."
He was at her side in a moment. "Then tell me why—why were you afterward so cold, so silent, avoiding even a casual glance?"
"Lest you might think that the discovery,—the wealth,"—she faltered.