"I—I'm so glad you all take that for granted," she said. "I don't know what I should do if you didn't."
And a little later Myra went to bed and to sleep, wondering if, after all, there were not secret places in the heart of her transparent kinswoman which evaded the search-warrant of cousinly disinterest.
CHAPTER XXIII
The obsequious waiter had cleared the table and brought in the dessert, and was hovering in the middle distance with two cigars in a whiskey glass. The persiflant young people at the other end of the table rose and went away, leaving a grateful silence behind them; and the clerical gentleman at Lansdale's right folded his napkin in absent-minded deference to home habit, and slipped sidewise out of his chair as if reluctant to mar the new-born hush.
Bartrow was down from the mine on the ostensible business of restocking the commissariat department of the Little Myriad,—a business which, prior to Miss Van Vetter's Denver year, had transacted itself indifferently well by letter,—and Lansdale was dining with him at the hotel by hospitable appointment. There were months between this and their last meeting, an entire winter, in point of fact; but it is one of the compensations of man-to-man friendships that they ignore absences and bridge intervals smoothly, uncoupling and upcoupling again with small jar of accountings for the incidents of the lacuna.
Because of the persiflant young people, the fire of query and rejoinder had been the merest shelling of the woods on either side; but with the advent of quiet Bartrow said: "Your winter on the lamb-ranch didn't do you much good, did it?"
"Think not?" Lansdale looked up quickly, with a pathetic plea for heartening in the deep-set eyes of him. "I was hoping you'd say it had. I feel stronger—at times."
Bartrow saw the plea and the pathos of it, and added one more to the innumerable contemnings of his own maladroitness. He was quite sure of his postulate, however,—as sure as he was of the unnecessary cruelty of setting it in words. Lansdale was visibly failing. The clean-shaven face was thin to gauntness, and the dark eyes were unnaturally bright and wistful. Bartrow bribed the ubiquitous waiter to remove himself, making the incident an excuse for changing the subject.