Alice Deringham found it very difficult to conceal the effect of this last blow, and was turning away when two women rose from a divan behind the screen. "The tea is cold. Shall I ask for some more for you?" said one of them. "Pleased to see you again, Miss Deringham."
She got no further, for the girl, who looked her full in the face, passed on, and the other woman flushed a trifle.
"I'm afraid she must have heard you," said somebody. "Miss Deringham is, I believe, a connection of Alton's, and Hettie Forel hinted there was something more than that between them. It would be an especially suitable match because of some property in the old country."
The lady she spoke to smiled somewhat sourly. "Then one would be a trifle sorry for the rancher," she said.
It cost Miss Deringham a good deal to talk to her hostess until she could depart without attracting attention, and she walked back to Forel's house with a blaze in her eyes. As yet she could not think connectedly, for the astonishment had left no room for more than vague sensations of disgust and anger and a horrible rankling of wounded pride. Mrs. Forel as it happened was busy, and the girl slipped away to a room that was seldom occupied and sat there in the gathering darkness staring at the fire. The story was, she strove to persuade herself, utterly impossible, for she had probed the man's character thoroughly, and seen that it was wholesome through all its crudities—and yet it was evident the horrible tale must have some foundation, because otherwise refutation would be so simple.
Almost incredible as it was, the belief that it was borne out by fact was forced upon her, and too dazed to reason clearly she shrank with an overwhelming sense of disgust. She had, it seemed, wilfully deceived herself, and the man was, as she had fancied at the beginning, without sensibility or refinement, brutal in his forcefulness, and swayed by elementary passions. Then she writhed under the memory of the occasions on which she had unbent somewhat far to him, and the recollection of two incidents in the sickroom stung her pride to the quick; while when the booming of a gong rolled through the house, she rose faint and cold with an intensity of anger that for the time being drove out any other feeling. It would have gone very hardly with Alton had chance afforded her the means of punishing him just then.
As fate would have it the opportunity was also given her, for that evening Deringham, who had heard nothing of the story, was able to secure a few minutes alone with his daughter. He was, she noticed, looking unusually pale and ill, and that reminded her that he owed all his anxieties to Alton.
"Our kinsman is going back to Somasco very shortly, and then on into the ranges. I wish he could be prevented," he said.
The girl laughed a little. "I think it would be difficult to prevent
Mr. Alton doing anything he had decided on."
"Yes," said Deringham. "He can be exasperatingly obstinate, but—and I put it frankly—he might listen to you. The journey he contemplates would be apt to prove perilous at this season."