CHAPTER XVII
“SURELY YOU KNEW?”
Myra Ingleby rose and wended her way slowly towards the house.
A stranger meeting her would probably have noticed nothing amiss with the tall graceful woman, whose pallor might well have been due to the unusual warmth of the day.
But the heart within her was dying.
Her joy had received a mortal wound. The man she adored, with a love which had placed him at the highest, was slowly slipping from his pedestal, and her hands were powerless to keep him there.
A woman may drag her own pride in the dust, and survive the process; but when the man she loves falls, then indeed her heart dies within her.
She had loved to call Jim Airth a cowboy. She knew him to be avowedly cosmopolitan. But was he also a slave to vulgar pride? Being plain Jim Airth himself, did he grudge noble birth and ancient lineage to those to whom they rightfully belonged? Professing to scorn titles, did he really set upon them so exaggerated a value, that he would turn from the woman he was about to wed, merely because she owned a title, while he had none?