Nevertheless, their eyes and their strange legend pursued and haunted him long after he and Jessie had cantered away from the herb-doctor's door.
CHAPTER IX.
LANCE AND SYLVESTER.
So mingled and conflicting were the considerations in Lance's mind, on leaving the Reefes, that he was not sure he would want to see Adela again. But his mood soon changed; he was not able to evade the importance which she had assumed for him.
"I hope you are satisfied now," said Jessie, as they rode homeward together.
"No, I'm not," he answered. "I suspect myself of being very much dissatisfied."
Somehow he did not dare to speak to her, as yet, of the theory he entertained, that Adela was a descendant of Gertrude Wylde. And how could he tell her that he thought they looked alike?
But within a few days, so incessantly did the notion pursue him, that he was forced to make a limited confession of it. Jessie observed that he was preoccupied and thinking of something which he would not tell her. "Do let me know what it is that troubles you, Ned," she whispered to him, laying her arm gently around his neck one evening on the veranda, when she found him brooding there alone.
Thereupon he made his disclosure, and was rewarded by a rather tumultuous dialogue, in which Jessie demonstrated clearly that she was not pleased with the idea which he presented.