In the meantime Wayne Shandon had at last seen Wanda. His reasons for making no effort to see her immediately after his heated interview with Martin Leland were clear in his own mind; he expected to find that they had been equally as clear to her, and that she would have understood. But the Wanda he found one riotously brilliant morning was rather cool, distant, unapproachable.
He had ridden up on the cliffs which towered at the upper end of the Echo Creek ranch, from which he could look down the valley and see her when she left the house, as he felt confident that she would. He saw her when it was not yet nine o'clock. She was riding out across the valley toward the cliffs opposite at the north end of the valley, toward the cave she had found there. Shandon marked the course she was taking, swung his horse across a ridge and hastened to the meeting with her. He came upon her as she dismounted near the big cedar against the rocks.
"Wanda!" he called softly.
She turned toward him, her face paler, he thought, than it should be. He slipped from the saddle and came swiftly toward her, his eyes shining, his arms out. Then she raised her hand, stopping him.
"Good morning, Wayne," she said quietly.
"Wanda," he cried, a little perplexed. "What is it? Aren't you glad to see me?"
She smiled, put down the parcel she had been carrying, and perched upon a big broken boulder forcing her eyes to look merrily into his. And what she read in his look sent a quick, glad flutter into her heart. But she did not let him know it.
"Glad to see you?" she replied gaily. "Why, of course I am. But," teasingly, a little cruelly, "aren't you the least bit afraid?"
"Afraid of what?" he asked blankly.
"Of papa!" she retorted, her dimples playing because she meant to look as though she was quite a heart whole maiden, and because the very ring of his earnest voice swept away all the uncertainty that had come to her during these last days of waiting. "You are on his land, you know."