She was looking at him dizzily through a mist of pain.
“The girl went with him,” he said, reading aright the question in her eyes. “There was talk of a pursuit, of an arrest. But unless Bamber should—— I think I may assure you that David will not be molested.”
He did not tell her that he had used all the official power at his command to shield the fugitives from the fury of the crowd, and further that the injured man had already received the best medical attention procurable in the county. Barbara learned these things long, long afterward, when the pain of that hour had been assuaged.
It was more than three months afterward, and the first snow was flying past the windows in big, feathery flakes, when a letter came to Barbara from a town in the Far West. It was from David, she saw, with a painful throb of surprise, and postponed the reading of it for a difficult hour, during which she reviewed once more and for the last time all the futile anguish and passion of a love that had bruised and hurt her from its beginning. Then she opened the letter with fingers that trembled not at all.
“Dear Barbara [he wrote]: I suppose by this time you have set me down as a poor skate of a fellow. It probably hasn’t occurred to you that it is entirely your own fault that you will never see me again. If you had gone with me to the fair that day, as I wanted you to do, I should not have met Jennie, nor gotten into a squabble with that unutterable cad, Bamber. I hear he got off with nothing worse than a crack in his foolish skull to remind him what it is like to try conclusions with a gentleman.
“I want to tell you, Barbara, that I’ve married Jennie, and so far, neither of us is sorry. She is a dear little wife, sweet-tempered, and entirely devoted to your humble servant. And I don’t find myself so deucedly uncomfortable in her company as you used to make me feel sometimes. Let me tell you, Barbara, that you’ll never succeed in making any man happy till you get off that high horse of yours and stop trying to run the universe. But I don’t suppose you’ll care for what I say, any more than you cared for me, and I don’t flatter myself that was a little bit.
“Just one thing more before I say good-bye for always. If you want to know who your master is, I’ll tell you. It is old Jarvis. I knew it all along. But I let you go on deceiving yourself, since you seemed to prefer doing it. You can settle it with him any way you see fit and I shall be satisfied.
“With best wishes for your future happiness, I am, my dear Barbara,
Yours faithfully.
“David Whitcomb.”