"I'll go soon," she repeated.
"My desire possibly will be understood by you," said he, after a slight hesitation, "when I say that Miss Gardner and I are engaged to be married. So it would please me immensely if you two became good friends."
Louise Graham showed some surprise. But this immediately changed to smiling interest.
"Accept my congratulations, Mr. Bryant," she said. "You may count on our being friends. Hereafter she and Miss Martin must come to our ranch whenever they will. I suppose they ride up where you are nearly every day; Miss Gardner, in particular, must be tremendously devoted to your project and now tremendously excited, too, over your race against time. Who wouldn't be, in her place!"
"Naturally," said Lee, with all the heartiness he could muster in his voice. But to himself, at least, his tone rang hollow.
When an hour or so after they had finished their meal they alighted from their Pullmans at Kennard, the echo of his forced reply still sounded in his mind with persistent irony. He was glad he had an interview with McDonnell before him that would silence it, the negotiating of a large private loan.