He was surprised when he saw what had just happened; but all his life he had controlled himself to such a degree that in critical moments he was coolest; and so what with another might have been a serious affair, he had turned into half retributive fun, but the deadliest punishment, as it afterwards turned out, that he could have inflicted on a temperament and nature such as Harry Travis'. For that young man, unable to stand the gibes of the neighborhood and the sarcasm of his uncle when it all became known, accepted a position in another town and never came back again.
To have been shot or floored in true melodramatic style by his rival, as he stood on a rock with a helpless girl in his clutch, would have been more to his liking than to be picked up bodily, by the nape of his neck, and taken from the scene of his exploits like a pig across a saddle.
That kind of a combat did not meet his ideas of chivalry.
Helen was dressed in her prettiest gown when Clay rode back to Millwood, after securing the samples he had started for. She knew he was coming and so she tied a white scarf over her head and went again to her favorite seat beneath the trees.
“I don't know how to thank you, Clay,” she said, as he swung down from his saddle and threw his leathern bag on the grass.
“Now, you look more like yourself,” he smiled admiringly, as he looked down on her white dress and auburn hair, drooping low over her neck and shoulders.
“Tell me about yourself and how you like it at the mill,” he went on as he sat down.
“Oh, you will not be willing to speak to me now—now that I am a mill-girl,” she added. “Do you know? Clay—”
“I know that, aside from being beautiful, you have just begun to be truly womanly in my sight.”
“Oh, Clay, do you really think that? It is the first good word that has been spoken to me since—since my—disgrace.”