Bonner was helplessly in love—so much so, indeed, that in the face of it, he lost the courage that had carried him through trivial affairs of the past, and left him floundering vaguely in seas that looked old and yet were new. Hourly, he sought for the first sign of love in her eyes, for the first touch of sentiment; but if there was a point of weakness in her defence, it was not revealed to the hungry perception of the would-be conqueror. And so they drifted on through the February chill, that seemed warm to them, through the light hours and the dark ones, quickly and surely to the day which was to call him cured of one ill and yet sorely afflicted by another.
Through it all he was saying to himself that it did not matter what her birth may have been, so long as she lived at this hour in his life, and yet a still, cool voice was whispering procrastination with ding-dong persistency through every avenue of his brain. "Wait!" said the cool voice of prejudice. His heart did not hear, but his brain did. One look of submission from her tender eyes and his brain would have turned deaf to the small, cool voice—but her eyes stood their ground and the voice survived.
The day was fast approaching when it would be necessary for him to leave the home of Mr. Crow. He could no longer encroach upon the hospitality and good nature of the marshal—especially as he had declined the proffered appointment to become deputy town marshal. Together they had discussed every possible side to the abduction mystery and had laid the groundwork for a systematic attempt at a solution. There was nothing more for them to do. True to his promise, Bonner had put the case in the hands of one of the greatest detectives in the land, together with every known point in the girl's history. Tinkletown was not to provide the solution, although it contained the mystery. On that point there could be no doubt; so, Mr. Bonner was reluctantly compelled to admit to himself that he had no plausible excuse for staying on. The great detective from New York had come to town, gathered all of the facts under cover of strictest secrecy, run down every possible shadow of a clew in Boggs City, and had returned to the metropolis, there to begin the search twenty-one years back.
"Four weeks," Bonner was saying to her reflectively, as they came homeward from their last visit to the abandoned mill on Turnip Creek. It was a bright, warm February morning, suggestive of spring and fraught with the fragrance of something far sweeter. "Four weeks of idleness and joy to me—almost a lifetime in the waste of years. Does it seem long to you, Miss Gray—oh, I remember, I am to call you Rosalie."
"It seems that I have known you always instead of for four weeks," she said gently. "They have been happy weeks, haven't they? My—our only fear is that you haven't been comfortable in our poor little home. It's not what you are accustomed—"
"Home is what the home folks make it," he said, striving to quote a vague old saying. He was dimly conscious of a subdued smile on her part and he felt the fool. "At any rate, I was more than comfortable. I was happy—never so happy. All my life shall be built about this single month—my past ends with it, my future begins. You, Rosalie," he went on swiftly, his eyes gleaming with the love that would not be denied, "are the spirit of life as I shall know it from this day forth. It is you who have made Tinkletown a kingdom, one of its homes a palace. Don't turn your face away, Rosalie."
But she turned her face toward him and her dark eyes did not flinch as they met his, out there in the bleak old wood.
"Don't, please don't, Wicker," she said softly, firmly. Her hand touched his arm for an instant. "You will understand, won't you? Please don't!" There was a world of meaning in it.
His heart turned cold as ice, the blood left his face. He understood. She did not love him.
"Yes," he said, his voice dead and hoarse, "I think I understand, Rosalie. I have taken too much for granted, fool that I am. Bah! The egotism of a fool!"