Challoner regarded her with a curious expression. "After all," he said, "that may be true."
Mrs. Foster joined them, and when, soon afterward, she and her friends left, Challoner sat alone for a long time, while the pictures faded as dusk crept into the gallery. A man of practical abilities, with a stern perception of his duty, he was inclined to distrust all that made its strongest appeal to the senses. Art and music he thought were vocations for women; in his opinion it was hardly fitting that a man should exploit his emotions by expressing them for public exhibition. Indeed, he regarded sentimentality of any kind as a failing; and it had been suggested that his son possessed the dangerous gift. One of his friends had even gone farther and hinted that Bertram should never have been a soldier; but Challoner could not agree with that conclusion. His lips set sternly as he went out in search of Greythorpe.
CHAPTER XIV
DEFEAT
A good fire burned on the hearth in the library at Sandymere, although the mild air of an early spring morning floated in through the open window. Challoner sat in a big leather chair, watching the flames and thinking of his nephew, when a servant entered and handed him a card.
Challoner glanced at it.
"Clarke? I don't know any one of that name—"
He stopped abruptly as he saw the word Sweetwater in small type at the bottom of the card. He knew that that was the name of the prairie town from which Blake had started on his quest into the wilderness.
"All right, Perkins," he said, rather eagerly; and a few minutes afterward Clarke entered the room, with an irritating air of assurance.
"Colonel Challoner, I presume?"