“I had intended building a hotel; came here with that intention. But—” He rose to his feet and said coldly, “Don’t you think we’d better be going back again? It’s quite a long walk.”
“But?”—she echoed, unheeding his last sentences—“but what?”
She made no movement save to clasp her hands on the broken fern. Her face, raised to him, suddenly was pale and set in a curious tenseness of inquiry. It moved the Colonel strangely.
“But what?” she repeated insistently. “You were going to say something else.”
“My dear little girl,” he answered, “don’t trouble your head about these things. It’s—it’s—a man’s dispute and for men to settle. But rest assured of one thing, you’ll not suffer by it.”
“I!” she exclaimed; “it’s not I that matters. But, Colonel Parrish, our mother.”
She stopped, her voice quivering like a taut string.
“Your mother?” said the Colonel, with a rising inflection.
“You see how it is with her. Let us stay. Let us stay a little while longer.”
“Did you bring me up here to ask me this?” he said, looking steadily at her.