Miss Torrance laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I am, of course, quite angry with Larry, but nobody else has a right to abuse him.”
Flora Schuyler said nothing further, and while she sat in thoughtful silence Clavering walked down the hall with Hetty’s maid. He was a well-favoured man, and the girl was vain. She blushed when he looked down on her with a trace of admiration in his smile.
“You like the prairie?” he said.
She admitted that she was pleased with what she had seen of it, and Clavering’s assumed admiration became bolder.
“Well, it’s a good country, and different from the East,” he said. “There are a good many more dollars to be picked up here, and pretty women are quite scarce. They usually get married right off to a rancher. Now I guess you came out to better yourself. It takes quite a long time to get rich down East.”
The girl blushed again, and when she informed him that she had a crippled sister who was a charge on the family, Clavering smiled as he drew on a leather glove.
“You’ll find you have struck the right place,” he said. “Now I wonder if you could fix a pin or something in this button shank. It’s coming off, you see.”
The girl did it, and when he went out found a bill lying on the table where he had been standing. The value of it somewhat astonished her, but after a little deliberation she put it in her pocket.
“If he doesn’t ask for it when he comes back I’ll know he meant me to keep it,” she said.