“I think you know why. This gold-mad country, or my own innate weakness or wickedness—call it what you please—has made a sorry castaway of me, Harry. As you know very well, I’ve travelled a long and crooked trail since we came out of the mountains together last spring. I don’t know whether or not I can find my way out of the woods; it’s all rather chaotic just now. I only know that I want to go bury myself for a while and see if I can’t fight through to daylight, somewhere and somehow.”
After a little pause, Bromley said: “You are thinking only of yourself, Phil? What about Jean?”
“Jean? I thought I had given you time enough there, Harry.”
“Nonsense! Jean loves me dearly—as a brother—as she ought to. I’m going to marry Mysie when she is old enough; that is, if she’ll have me.”
“Mysie? I never dreamed of that! But how about the Follansbee affair?”
“Humph!” said the play-boy. “You don’t keep up with the neighborhood gossip. Eugie begged off some time ago. She is going to marry Stephen Drew next month.”
“Oh; so that little problem solves itself, does it? But we were speaking of Jean. How much does she know about my father—and me?”
“All there is to know. She has known it all along.”
“And she doesn’t despise me?”
“You’ll not get anything out of me; go and ask her for yourself. Or are you going to drop out for a whole winter without seeing her?”