She hated him for that speech. His careless words and disdainful attitude cut her sensitive nature to the quick. Evidently he despised her.
Yet for all that, he did not neglect her interests. For two weeks after her arrival and previous to her début, she was the most written about person in town. The papers were full of her. It was invaluable advertising and she tried to show her appreciation in other ways, inviting him to dinner, and sending him little presents. But still he held aloof, letting her understand plainly that he knew her record and was not to be hoodwinked or inveigled. The truth was, that women of her class did not interest him. Indeed, they filled him with aversion, yet he pitied rather than condemned them. "One never knows," he used to say when the question came up with his men friends, "what kind of a life they were up against, or to what temptations they were subjected. The most virtuous woman alive could not swear exactly what she would do if confronted with certain conditions." This was a pet theory of his, and it made him more charitable than others.
Meantime, he was studying Laura at close range. He found that she was weak rather than really vicious. There was much of the spoiled child in her make-up. Her bringing up had been bad. In different environments she might have been entirely different. There was much in her that attracted him. He liked her merry disposition, her girlish ingenuousness. Such a naïve nature, he argued, could not be wholly depraved. He frankly enjoyed her society, and it was not long before he let down the barriers of his reserve. Laura was quick to notice the change, and she would have belied her sex if it had not given her pleasure. Madison interested her; he was refreshingly different from all the men she had ever met. She wondered what his life was. At every opportunity she encouraged him to speak of himself.
"Do you like this newspaper work?" she demanded, one day.
He shook his head.
"No; there is nothing in it," he answered. "When a big story breaks loose—a strike or a murder, or a bank robbery—one likes the excitement, but when things quiet down the dull routine palls on you. I won't stay in it."
"Then what will you do?"
"Hike it up to the Northwest—and dig for gold," he replied. Confidentially he went on: "I have the chance of a quarter interest in a mine up there. If I strike luck, I'll be richer than Croesus."
"And then?" she smiled.
"Then I'll come back and marry you!" he said laughingly.