"Daddy," she said gently, "it grieves me to disobey you, to disappoint you. But once for all you must know that no inducement, however tempting to me or however disappointing to you in my refusal of it, will persuade me to do the thing you urge."
Again to her surprise, he showed no great chagrin. Instead he betrayed an over anxiety in his desire to conciliate her.
Through the long, sleepless hours of the night she brooded, striving to think a way out. The sense of personal peril grew upon her. She remembered the light in her father's eyes as he told her of his good fortune. She shuddered as she recalled it. In the morning, as she rode over the Valley, she decided to see Ned at the earliest moment.
Rob McClure was greatly alarmed at the invulnerable front the girl presented. Arrived in his office, he drew a bundle of documents from a drawer and examined them. The title fascinated him. He rocked back in his chair to con its lure when his eyes caught the vision of the two faces above. Suddenly he realized that upon the inscrutable and inviolable will behind the sweet face of Mary rested his fortune. With Mary and not with himself rested the decision that should ratify or destroy his arrangement with Sykes. It all depended upon the girl above with the innocent face. Could he leave it to her? A keen study of the pure eye and firm brow shook his confidence in a desirable outcome. Rising, he leaned toward the picture with an abandon that betrayed his intensity of desire.
"Mary!" he whispered. "You will throw me down. I feel it. Sykes is right. There is no other way. The little chit is blind. I shall be forced to do it. I will see Sykes. She will surrender when there is nothing else to do."
This colloquy with the silent photograph had momentous results for the fair original.
At noon there was the clatter of hoofs outside the Pullar homestead and the winding of a silvery halloo. Ned went out.
"To saddle!" cried Mary as Ned appeared. "Get Darkey and come! We'll ride at high noon! We'll brew a tale on the King's Highway."
Aware that some serious matter prompted Mary's visit Ned was up on Darkey in a trice and they rode out on an endless trail of the undulating plain. When deep out in the lonely stretch Mary drew Bobs to a walk.
"Ned," she said, "are you prepared for a most unusual proposition?"